Yep, that one! I haven't received anything from the TEC since then, but it may be lost in the same black hole that other items of my mail disappear into from time to time. I didn't even receive the rejection of my Statement from them - it was copied to me by Hull City Council.

The last thing l received from TEC was the Order issued incorrectly canceling the additional charges, etc. Everything else has come from Hull City Council with the exception of the Court Order from the County Court.

I ticked that I had made representations about the penalty within 28 days but did not receive a rejection notice. The initial NtO was dated 13 May and my first (unreceived!) letter was dated 15 May. Does this make a difference? The wording in your post above doesn't exactly match the options on the TE9 from provided by the TEC. I can upload a copy of the one I submitted, if necessary. Thank you so much for this. Lynette

lol Thanks f16! I forgot to mention it at the time, but Hull City Council hand delivered a copy of my NtO to my house to ensure that I had received a copy! I was actually quite impressed that they did this, considering the history l have with missing mail (and it's not just the bad stuff that goes AWOL, in case anyone was wondering!

Porkyp1g, I was considering appealing due to: Hull City Council claiming they hadn't received not one, not two, but THREE letters I sent them; They rejected my Out Of Time Statement despite the fact that I wasn't contesting the actual PCN, just the additional charge as I believed it had been paid; The inaccuracies in their reasons for rejecting the Statement, the documenting of my telephone calls to them and also in the Statement of "Truth" they sent to Hull County Court, where they referred to me not only by my mother-in-law's name but also by the name of a complete stranger, not to mention accusing me outright of lying about sending the letters; They didn't even bother to turn up at Court for the hearing, citing a "massive failure of the Council's computer equipment which meant [he] did not receive a warning for any appointments [he] had"; The fact that it has taken an entire YEAR to get this anywhere near sorted - the initial ticket was issued on 9 April, (Happy first birthday for tomorrow to my PCN!) In the end however, I simply requested that the PCN be charged at the discounted rate, paraphrasing Jamberson's extremely helpful letter above to remind them that if I have to take this further, they may find the entire ticket cancelled.

I'm now considering contesting the entire PCN as I was going to use the cheque for my costs to pay the ticket, but it still hasn't arrived! It seems that Hull City Council want to drag this out as much as they can. If I were to contest the ticket due to the length of time this has been ongoing, is there a specific paragraph of the law I should quote?

Hi again. Thanks so far for all of your help, Jamberson and TomTubby. I think I'm finally coming to the 'end of the road' with this, if you'll excuse the pun! I received the NtO yesterday which has set the cost of the ticket back to £70, not the initial £35. My cheque for costs is to follow. I did receive an apology for there being no representative at Court - apparently there was a major computer system malfunction at Hull City Council that day! l know you say I can contest the ticket as it's almost a year old (9 April), but I really just want this over with. I accept that l parked in a Disabled bay (albeit not intentionally), and want to pay, but we're back to the initial situation where I feel l shouldn't be responsible for the additional costs due to a system failure at their end. However, if this is correct and the NtO should be for the non-reduced fee, I think I'm going to have to just pay it rather than drag this out for more months. Any last thoughts/advice?

Hi! I hadn't forgotten about you, I've just been waiting for Hull County Court to send me my Order. I called them today and they advised that it had only been typed up this afternoon so I requested that they email it to me here at work, otherwise I'd still be waiting for a copy via the Royal Mail ten days after the hearing. In case I haven't uploaded the attachment correctly, the Order reads: 1. Permission is granted to the Defendant LynetteC to file a statutory declaration/witness statement out of time, such document to be filed within 14 days. 2. The Claimant Kingston upon Hull City Council pay the Defendant's costs limited to the Court fee of £80. Dated 17 February 2014. It doesn't stipulate when the 14 days should start from, given that the Order was made on 17th but not actually typed up until 27th. I've tried to call Northampton TEC, but was on hold for 10 minutes and had only moved four places up the queue to number 5 so I had to give up. Where do I stand? I've already filed one Out of Time statement - can I just email the same documents to Hull County Court, Northampton TEC and the person at Hull City Council who responded to my last email (and was also the person in whose name their statement was filed)? Hopefully once this is sorted it will be the end of this whole sorry saga, given that I'm not actually contesting the original ticket! Thanks. Lynette [ATTACH=CONFIG]49481[/ATTACH]

Thanks for following up for me, Jamberson. The Judge was consulting a book throughout the 'hearing'. He read out what he had written on the Order and he definitely gave me 14 days to file a Statement. He was going to say 7 days, but I asked if I would be able to file by email as l am on holiday in Edinburgh now (l drove up yesterday) and he said I'd need to print it out and send it to the Council and the Court. l asked if I should also send it to the TEC but he didn't know and made a comment about me being an expert by the end of the proceedings! l'll be home on Sunday night and will scan and upload whatever I've received from the Court as soon as l can. Out of curiosity, what do I do if it turns out that the Judge has made an incorrect Order? Thanks again for all your help. Lynette

I've just come out of Court where my case was listed in front of a Deputy District Judge! Hull City Council never showed up. The Judge said that today's hearing was only to consider whether or not I should be permitted to rely on an Out Of Time Statement, not the PCN itself. He has granted permission and given me 14 days to file as I'm going to be away for a week as it's half term. He also Ordered Hull City Council to pay the cost of the hearing - £80. He said it should make it "interesting"! So I assume now that I have to consolidate my original TE7/9 application with my N244 statement and all of the incorrect information from the Council's response and send it (registered, signature required!) to the Court, Hull City Council and the TEC? As always, advice gratefully received. Thanks. Lynette

Thanks again Jamberson. The way you've described it doesn't sound as scary as "going to Court"! It's ridiculous that it's come this far - I'm not contesting the ticket, just the additional charges, although they *did* send some lovely, high quality printed photos of my car in the disabled bay to prove it was there! Nice to know where my Council Tax goes! )

Thank you Andy. Fingers crossed somebody can offer me some advice before Monday. As a bit of an update to this saga, tonight I contacted the lady I order clothes from online to see if she had received any paperwork from the Royal Mail in respect of my missing parcel from November/December. Apparently, they sent me a letter to sign to say that I hadn't received the item - two weeks ago! I've asked her to write a letter to this effect that I can take to Court on Monday to present as further evidence of post not reaching my address.

OK, I have an update. I've been given a Court Date of 17 February and yesterday received Hull City Council's representations. It came in a hand-written envelope addressed to Mrs P C*** - I'm Mrs L C*** but as the only Mrs in the house I opened it anyway. The covering letter is also addressed to Mrs P C***. OK, so the P is near the L on a computer keyboard, perhaps it's a simple mis-type on the letter. I started scanning through the document and found at paragraph 6 on page 3: "... a NTO (BW1 pages 1 - 5) was sent to Mrs Patricia C***, 136..." Mrs Patricia C*** is my mother-in-law. She has never lived at 136 with us and I have never lived with my in-laws at their address on the other side of the city. In addition, neither my mother-in-law nor father-in-law have ever owned a car or even hold a driving licence. Why would Hull City Council be trawling through my family members to have this information? The NTO attached at 'BW1 pages 1 - 5' is correctly addressed to me. Then at paragraph 8: "...in keeping with good practice, a letter sent to Mrs Hannam at the address above..." I have no idea who Mrs Hannam is - most likely the unfortunate individual whose Court papers have been recycled to prepare my documents! There are also inconsistencies in the records paraphrasing the telephone conversations I had with Call Centre staff : The record states that during my first call I claimed the ticket was paid and I was advised to provide proof - what I actually said is that I had believed it paid until the reciept of the first letter, when I checked my bank statement and found the payment hadn't been processed. This is also the content of my first letter to them. For my last call, they have recorded that I said it had been agreed that I only had to pay £35 and was advised that I was "wrong" - I called and advised that I had received a Court Order and read out the content of that Order to the operator. I was advised that they had the rejection of my Out of Time Statement on file and that I should contact the TEC to clarify the issue. At paragraph 16, in reference to the three letters they didn't receive it states that "I regard the odds of this as so incredible as to leave me with no other alternative but to consider that these items were never received in this office and indeed never posted". So basically I am a liar! They note at paragraph 17 the inconsistency between the content of my first letter and the content of the telephone call - this is purely the fault of the Call Centre operator's recording of our conversation as I have never claimed the payment completed as I accept that it never appeared on my bank statement. Will I have a chance to address all of these errors in Court, or do I need to go through the statement and write a point by point representation before the hearing? The fact that they find it unlikely that my three letters were ever posted suggests they're blaming the Royal Mail - judging by the sloppy way they've thrown this statement together and the way their Call Centre staff mis-represent the conversations they have had with clients, I would suggest it's a failure of their administration rather that the postman! I'm a little apprehensive about the Court hearing, so any advice would be gratefully received. Thanks. Lynette No advice, guys? Please? Sorry to bump this post again, but l could really use some advice:- Do I need to respond to the Council's statement in writing or will l get a chance to raise the above issues at the hearing? What normally happens at these hearings? l am awaiting some paperwork from a lady l order clothes from online as a parcel went missing before Christmas, which l hope to use as evidence that my post does go astray from time to time. Will l get the chance to present it at the hearing, or should l submit it in advance? Thanks. Lynette If nobody in the Bailiff's forum can help, would it be possible for my thread to be moved back to the Local Authority Parking and Traffic Offences forum where somebody may be able to advise me? Thanks. Lynette

Well, I've emailed the form to the TEC and I'll call them tomorrow about the fee. I tried to speak to somebody at Hull City Council today but I was told that the Traffic Department don't take calls from the public! (I wonder why? ) I was on hold and going back and forth for about 20 minutes, but I *did* manage to score an email address so in future you can guess how I'm going to communicate with them! I've also copied them into the email to the TEC so they'll know first thing tomorrow that the application has been made and call off the dogs - I mean bailiffs! Thank you Jamberson for following me over from the Local Authority Parking forum and continuing to help me here. It's most appreciated.

The final step - should I request a hearing at a local County Court (and necessitate time off work) or will the £45 process without a hearing be sufficient? Which would you recommend?