Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s handling of Miss X’s correspondence about her refused appeal against a penalty charge notice. This is because there is not enough evidence of fault by the Council or to show its actions caused Miss X significant injustice.

The complaint

1. Miss X complains the Council failed to direct her to the Traffic Penalty Tribunal (TPT) to request a review of its decision to refuse her appeal against a penalty charge notice (PCN). She also says the Council failed to consider new information about the PCN and told her it would not respond to any further communication about the matter.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse effect on the person making the complaint, which we call ‘injustice’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We do not start an investigation if we decide the tests set out in our Assessment Code are not met. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

3. I considered information provided by Miss X and the Council.
4. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

Background

5. The Council issued Miss X a PCN for a parking contravention in February 2025. Miss X says she followed the instructions to pay for parking and initially challenged the PCN on the grounds the contravention did not occur. When the Council rejected her challenge she argued it may instead be the result of a technical issue with the parking machine or poor instructions about how to pay for parking.
6. The Council rejected Miss X’s formal representations against the PCN and Miss X appealed to the Traffic Penalty Tribunal (TPT). The TPT accepted Miss X did not intend to commit the contravention but rejected Miss X’s appeal as it was satisfied the contravention occurred.
7. Miss X contacted the Council on 30 June, 7 July and 24 July requesting “that the case be reconsidered due to new information which was not available to me at the time of the hearing.” The new information referred to was included in the Council’s response to Miss X’s ‘freedom of information’ request.
8. The Council responded on 3 and 8 July referring to the TPT’s decision and telling Miss X she had 28 days to pay the PCN. Its response on 11 August 2025 directed Miss X to the TPT in the event she had new and relevant information which may alter its decision.
9. Miss X then applied to the TPT for a review of its decision but the TPT refused to carry one out. It said Miss X had failed to meet the deadline for a review request- 14 days from the date of the decision- but confirmed it had considered whether to extend the deadline in the interests of justice. It concluded however that as the contravention occurred, they could find no proper or proportionate reason to do so. It considered the new information Miss X provided but commented that this did not affect the decision to refuse her appeal. Miss X complains the Council should have directed her to the TPT sooner and that as a result of its failure to do so, she unfairly missed her right to request a review.

Conclusions

10. The Council confirms Miss X would have received information about the TPT’s review process with its decision on her appeal and should therefore have been aware of the process. There is a reasonable expectation Miss X would have read this information and that the Council would not therefore have expected it needed to refer her to it.
11. In the circumstances I do not consider there was enough evidence of fault by the Council on this point.
12. However, even if we could say the Council was at fault for not directing Miss X to the Tribunal’s review process sooner we could not say this caused the injustice she claims.
13. Miss X had 14 days from the date of the TPT’s decision to request a review. She first contacted the Council asking for her case to be reconsidered on 30 June 2025, 15 days after the TPT’s decision. She was therefore already out of time to request a review when she first contacted the Council and could not reasonably have expected it to respond immediately.
14. Furthermore, the TPT’s decision to refuse Miss X’s review request shows it considered the new information she provided regardless of the fact the request was out of time, as set out at Paragraph 9. So we could not say, on the balance of probabilities, that even if the Council had responded to Miss X’s 30 June 2025 with information about the review process, Miss X would have submitted her review request on time or that the TPT would have overturned its original decision.

New matters

15. Miss X contacted us on 13 November 2025 to raise new concerns about the Council’s handling of the PCN which have not yet been the subject of a formal complaint to the Council. These issues are ‘premature’, as the Council has not yet had an opportunity to respond to them, but I have considered them as they do not provide any basis to investigate further.
16. Miss X says the Council has wrongly escalated her case by issuing a charge certificate despite failing to respond to her formal representation dated 18 September 2025. She believes this is contrary to the Regulations, which prohibit the issue of a charge certificate where representations have been made but not yet answered.
17. Miss X appears to have misinterpreted the Regulations on this point. The Council has an obligation to respond to formal representations made in response to the ‘notice to owner’, which the Council issued on 15 April 2025. Miss X made her formal representations on 23 April 2025 and the Council rejected them on 9 May 2025. The process does not allow for further formal representations more than 28 days after the issue of the notice to owner, or once the TPT has considered and refused an appeal.
18. While I appreciate Miss X contacted the Council on 18 September 2025 to express her continued dissatisfaction with the PCN and the Council’s failure to refer her to the TPT’s review process sooner, this did not amount to a formal representation against the PCN and the Council had already told her it would not enter into further correspondence about the matter.
19. The Council had given Miss X several warnings to pay the PCN, as directed by the TPT, but Miss X failed to do so. The Council was therefore entitled to progress the case as it did and there is no evidence of fault in the way it did so.

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Final decision

20. We will not investigate this complaint because there is not enough evidence of fault by the Council or to show its actions caused Miss X significant injustice.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman