London Borough of Newham (26 003 514)
Category : Transport and highways > Parking and other penalties
Decision : Closed after initial enquiries
Decision date : 01 Jun 2026
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about a Penalty Charge Notice for an alleged parking contravention. There is insufficient evidence of fault to warrant an investigation.
The complaint
- Mr X says the Council did not properly consider the London Tribunal Adjudicator’s recommendation to cancel his Penalty Charge Notice (PCN) for an alleged traffic contravention.
- Mr X complains that instead of using its discretion to cancel the PCN, the Council increased the original charge for the PCN.
- Mr X also complains about how the Council handled his complaint.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
- The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes limits on what we can investigate.
- We cannot normally investigate a complaint when someone has a right of appeal, reference or review to a tribunal about the same matter. However, we may decide to investigate if we consider it would be unreasonable to expect the person to use this right. If the person has already appealed we have no power to investigate. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(6)(a), as amended)
- London Tribunals considers parking and moving traffic offence appeals for London, and the Traffic Penalty Tribunal for the rest of England.
- We investigate complaints of injustice caused by ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. I have used the word fault to refer to these. We consider whether there was fault in the way an organisation made its decision. If there was no fault in how the organisation made its decision, we cannot question the outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), as amended)
How I considered this complaint
- I considered information from the complainant and the Council and the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
Final decision
- Mr X used the representations and appeals procedure to challenge this PCN. The Council provided evidence it considered the London Tribunal Adjudicator’s recommendation and decided not to use its discretion to cancel the PCN. The Council reduced the PCN to the original discounted amount and Mr X paid the bill. We will not investigate this complaint about a PCN because there is insufficient evidence of fault to warrant an investigation. We will not investigate the matter of complaint handling as it is not a good use of public resources to investigate complaints about complaint handling when we are not looking at the substantive issue.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman