Moving traffic offences

This fact sheet is aimed primarily at people who have concerns about a penalty charge notice (PCN) issued by enforcing authorities and who may be considering making a complaint to the Ombudsman.

I have received a penalty charge notice for a moving traffic offence. Can the Ombudsman help me?

Transport for London (TfL) and councils both inside and outside London may enforce traffic regulations made under various Acts of Parliament. They include penalties for different types of contravention, including those about bus lanes, yellow box junctions, prohibited turns, traffic prohibitions and road user charging schemes.

The law says the registered keeper is responsible for any penalty charge even if they were not the person driving the vehicle when the alleged contravention happened. The registered keeper is the person or organisation recorded as the keeper by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA).

If your complaint is about the issue of a penalty the law says you may make representations to the enforcing authority against the issue of the penalty on certain statutory grounds. If the enforcing authority rejects your representations, you may appeal to a statutory tribunal. Inside London the appeal is made to London Tribunals and outside London to the Traffic Penalty Tribunal (TPT).

An independent adjudicator who is not part of the enforcing authority will hear your appeal. The procedure is free and relatively straightforward. The Ombudsman would usually expect someone to use this right of appeal and so will not investigate a complaint about the issue of the penalty.

There are different statutory grounds of appeal for each type of contravention. The London Tribunals and TPT websites listed below explain what they are. As well as the statutory grounds for appeal the motorist can ask the enforcing authority to consider any other reasons, known as ‘mitigating circumstances’, for cancelling the penalty charge in the particular case.

We can investigate complaints about an enforcing authority’s failure to properly consider a motorist’s mitigating circumstances where it is clear London Tribunals or the TPT cannot consider them.  We can also investigate complaints where an adjudicator has referred a case back to the enforcing authority to re-consider the motorist’s mitigating circumstances, but has failed to do so.

We can look at complaints about other enforcement steps by an authority but, where a right to go to court exists, we would usually expect it to be used. The Traffic Enforcement Centre at the Northampton Business Centre of HM Courts and Tribunal Service deals with applications to make a statutory declaration (Witness Statement) or to make a statutory declaration 'out of time'. So if a motorist has this right to try to restore the right to pay a penalty at an early stage or to appeal it would be reasonable for them to use it. This is because the law says the Ombudsman should not normally investigate where Parliament has provided a statutory right to go a court.

The Ombudsman may be able to consider a complaint about the actions of bailiffs acting for a council, but this depends on the individual circumstances. You should first try to resolve any issue with the council or the bailiffs. If the matter remains unresolved, we can consider the particular circumstances and decide if we can help.

I have paid a penalty charge to avoid it increasing, but I still want to contest it. As I no longer have the right to appeal, can you investigate?

Parliament provided you with the right of appeal to an independent adjudicator and the Ombudsman usually expects people to use that right to challenge penalty charges if they dispute them. If you wanted to complain about it, you should not have paid the charge but should instead have used the appeals procedure. The fact you have lost the right of appeal as a result of paying the charge does not change this; the Ombudsman will not investigate a complaint where you could reasonably have used an appeal right.

How do I complain?

You should check with the enforcing authority as soon as possible about your appeal rights as there are time limits for appealing. Because the law sets out the procedure for dealing with challenges to penalty charges and it leads to an independent appeal, an enforcing authority will not usually deal with such matters through its complaints procedure. Further, the existence of appeal rights (whether or not you use them) will usually mean that the Ombudsman cannot help you.

We will only accept complaints from the registered keeper of the vehicle or with the registered keeper’s consent.

Usually, you should complain to us within 12 months of when you first knew about the problem. If you leave it any later, we may not be able to help.

For more information on how to complain, please read our step by step process.

Examples of some complaints we have considered

The complainant received a penalty charge notice (PCN) for driving in a bus lane in 2019.  He queried the PCN with the Council and, when it responded, he sent a cheque for the amount owed.  The Council said it did not receive payment so it progressed the case, increasing the charge from £30 to £90.  It later accepted it had received the cheque but said it had been sent to the wrong address and did not contain the information required to link it to his case. 
The Council accepted fault and made changes to its processes to avoid similar complaints in the future.  We recommended it provide a further apology to the complainant and pay him £200 for fault in its handling of the case and his complaint.
A council issued the complainant a penalty charge notice for a moving traffic contravention in 2020.  The complainant disputed the PCN and claimed he was not the owner of the vehicle at the time of the contravention.  He made representations against the PCN and appealed to London Tribunals. We could not investigate the complaint because the complainant had used their right of appeal.

Other sources of information

In London – London Tribunals website at www.londontribunals.gov.uk has details of the legislation and appeal process.

Outside London – The Traffic Penalty Tribunal website at www.trafficpenaltytribunal.gov.uk/site/ has details of the legislation and appeals process.

Our fact sheets give some general information about the most common type of complaints we receive but they cannot cover every situation. If you are not sure whether we can look into your complaint, please contact us.

The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman provides a free, independent and impartial service. We consider complaints about the administrative actions of councils and some other authorities. We cannot question what a council has done simply because someone does not agree with it. If we find something has gone wrong, such as poor service, service failure, delay or bad advice and that a person has suffered as a result the Ombudsman aims to get it put right by recommending a suitable remedy.

November 2023

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