Thanks for your replies. I will call the council tomorrow and find out the whole story. Also, Jamberson, I dont think the mistakes were on my part (they may well have been, but not to my knowledge), the council had not sent the correct paperwork to the TEC and so my TE7/TE9 was initially rejected and then ignored when I resent it. They had also not sent me the NTO - so all in all, a bit strange.

The Zinc Group Limited

I know this is from a while ago - but I just noticed I had not replied to this thread with the outcome. I appealed and the council decided to scrap the PCN. Thanks again guys - another win.

I was hoping somebody could help me with a rather strange call from a credit agency. The call was regarding a parking ticket which remains unpaid from 28/10/2011. Please excuse me if I have missed out any of the details, this is simply as it was so long ago I do not remember the full picture. Looking back through old emails, this ticket was indeed unpaid as it seemed to have been mis-processed by the council. They had not sent me a NTO prior to the charge certificate so I decided to fill in a in a TE9 / TE7 and sent it to the TEC bulk centre ("tec.bulkcentre@hmcts.gsi.gov.uk") in order to appeal the case outside of the 14 days. However it appears the council had not submitted the paperwork to the TEC, but I was still getting letters (unfortunately I can not find these as this is from 3 years ago). I therefore filled in a new Out Of Time witness statement (TE9 / TE7) as advised by the TEC at the time, and sent it directly to their customer service address (customerservice.tec@hmcourts-service.gsi.gov.uk). With the reason stated as below: "Reason(s): I had not received the notice to owner until AFTER the charge certificate, and after the time in which I could make a formal representation. I would like to request that this process is started from the beginning so that I could get a fair say in the matter. This was protested through a letter and told that this could not be processed as the time had already passed. I then sent a TE9 but the borough had not submitted it to the TEC. The borough suggested to me to submit this form as it is out of their hands to do anything about this. I am attempting again to push this through and appreciate your consideration on the matter." From this point on the case fell silent. No more letters, emails, phone calls or anything else - until a couple of days ago. I have now been asked to pay a £190 penalty and would like to know what my next course of action should be. I do not see why I should pay anything but the discounted initial amount, if that. Are there any time limitations on a PCN being chased? What information would I require to fight the case and who would be the best body to get in touch with? Any other information would be much appreciated! Hope somebody could help with this. Thanks VM! Rez

It is vehicle specific - only for my reg no.

Hi All, I just received a council PCN for a missing parking permit and I was wondering if I had any grounds. I purchased my car not too long ago and have not yet attached a tax disk holder / resident permit holder. I had therefore temporarily removed these from the dashboard when I had the window open to avoid them flying off and had parked the car without putting these back - which wasn't clever. The contravention was for "Parked in a residents' zone or shared use parking place or zone without either clearly displaying a valid permit or voucher or pay and display ticket issued for that place, or without payment of the parking charges - shared use bay". Would I have any grounds on either the basis that I had a valid permit, but not displayed (which I guess is still a contravention), or that the tax disc number / expiry date are printed as "Unknown" Many thanks in advance for your help.

Response from the CEO of the council: As I hope you can appreciate, it is difficult to establish why a payment may have been made or received late. In this instance, I can advise that following review your payment of £60.00 has been accepted in settlement of the penalty charge and you need not take any further action. In closing, I trust that you will be satisfied with the action taken. Thank you very much for your help guys! Cheers, Reza

So what you are saying is that even though they had no case initially because I had paid them, they started to have a case because they sent me letters? Do you know what the legal power they use?

By the way, the manager at Camden council was very rude and wasn't helpful at all. When I explained the situation very nicely and thoroughly to him all he said was we tried to contact you and you didnt get back to us and all you can do is pay the bailiffs.

Ok, so I just got off the phone with them. It is in fact £247, £127 apparently is from the council and the rest are bailiff fees. They claim they have been chasing it in March, April and May and therefore there is nothing they can do now. I will probably go through the N244 route. I doubt they have a case at all to be honest. If I sent them a letter saying they owed me £500 and they ignored me, it doesnt mean they automatically owe me that amount! All they can argue is that I sent the cheque late but they have no proof of this, I guess I dont have proof I sent it either but the date on the cheque is more proof than they have.

When you say my case is not strong, this is for the out of time? If I go down the N244 route, could I not just ignore the fact that it is out of time and fight the original case that this shouldn't even be a charge as I have paid it in full and all correspondence beyond this point should be ignored?

I see. OK, so what you are saying is that the only thing they care about on the TE7 is why it was late? OK, now I am really not sure where to go with this though. I don't want to pay £247. Other than speaking to the council, is there anything else I can do?

Thanks seanamarts. I will call them on Monday and see what they have to say. There is no breakdown at all. I will need to find out this from them also, not sure if they have this information.

This may be true if we were talking about the PCN itself. This is a difficult one though, because when the notice to owner is sent, I still would have needed an out of time witness statement since the 28 days after the original PCN would already have passed. Either way, I don't think it is a timing issue. The TE9 itself says that for the OOT witness statement to be accepted, we need one of the following conditions. I was going for number 4. Or am I missing something? 1 - I did not receive the Notice to Owner / Penalty Charge Notice (Parking contravention) 2 - I appealed against the local authority’s decision to reject my representation, within 28 days of service of the rejection notice, but have had no response to my appeal. 3 - I made representations about the penalty charge to the enforcing authority concerned within 28 days of the service of the Notice to Owner, but did not receive a rejection notice. 4 - The penalty charge has been paid in full.

I don't have the letter with me at the moment but I think it was £247. There no breakdown. They haven't visited as far as I know.