There are many reasons why you could be given a parking ticket, such as parking on yellow lines, parking in residents’ parking areas without a permit and not displaying a valid ticket in a pay and display area.
Different organisations enforce parking rules, including local councils, the police, private companies and Transport for London and the National Car Parks Services Ltd (NCP) in Northern Ireland. If you do get a ticket, your rights vary depending on who issued it and whether you were parked on the street or in a car park.
In most parts of England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and many urban areas of Scotland, most on-street parking is enforced by council-employed parking attendants or traffic wardens employed by NCP in Northern Ireland, who issue Penalty Charge Notices (PCNs) through the civil justice system. This type of parking enforcement is called Civil Parking Enforcement and council parking attendants are called Civil Enforcement Officers.
Police traffic wardens enforce more serious parking rules, such as Priority or Red Route regulations, by issuing Fixed Penalty Notices (FPNs) through the criminal justice system.
If you're caught breaking parking or waiting rules in an area where Civil Parking Enforcement is in operation, you will be issued with a Penalty Charge Notice (PCN).
PCNs are usually issued by being fixed to the windscreen of the car concerned or handed to the person who appears to be in charge of it. They can also be issued by post.
You will usually have 28 days to either pay the charge or challenge it by writing to the issuing authority. If you pay within 14 days (21 days for those caught on camera), the amount is reduced by 50%.
Some council car parks have parking attendants who can issue Penalty Charge Notices (PCNs), which you can challenge in the same way as a PCN issued to a vehicle parked on the street.
In areas where Civil Parking Enforcement has not been introduced, some local authorities issue Excess Charge Notices (ECNs) or Standard Charge Notices (SCNs) in their car parks or in metered or pay-and-display bays on the street.
You have the right to appeal if you think a PCN has been issued unfairly or incorrectly. You must begin the process by writing to the issuing authority setting out your representations and enclosing all of your evidence. This must be done within the 28 days permitted for payment. For further information see our section on ‘Parking fines’.
Councils in England, Wales and Scotland or the Roads Service in Northern Ireland can tow away or clamp a vehicle in certain circumstances. If you are clamped, they should do so only if a Penalty Charge Notice (PCN) has been issued and 30 more minutes have passed. For persistent offenders, this time limit is reduced to 15 minutes. If you believe your car was unfairly clamped, you can appeal, but you'll have to first pay the release fee to free your car, and then appeal later. You contest the clamping charges using the same system that deals with PCNs.
To appeal a PCN and/or a council/Roads Service clamping fee
There are several legal grounds for appealing against a PCN, including that the alleged parking contravention did not actually happen, or that when the vehicle was parked it had been taken without your consent. A full list of grounds for appeal is available on the Traffic Penalty Tribunal website Traffic Penalty Tribunal 
.
We consider PCNs in detail in our section on parking fines.
You may also think you shouldn't have received a ticket because of exceptional circumstances (for example, you had stopped your car to help at an accident).
To appeal an Excess Charge Notice (ECN) or Standard Charge Notice (SCN)
ECN and SCN appeals are dealt with by the council that issued the notice.
To appeal a Fixed Penalty Notice (FPN)
FPNs issued by a police officer or police traffic warden are dealt with through the criminal justice system.
The only formal way to challenge the issue of an FPN is to have your case heard in court and plead not guilty. However, some police forces do allow an informal appeal, when you can write a letter explaining why you don’t think you should have to pay. If this is possible in your area, information about where to write to will be included with the FPN.
For detailed information on Scotland and Northern Ireland, please see our section on ‘Parking fines’.
For more helpful information on parking fines and clamping and see the UK councils’ traffic regulation information website: PATROL Online
If you exceed the speed limit and are caught doing so by the police or a safety camera, the police could do any of the following:
The action taken depends mostly on how much over the speed limit you were driving. Although individual police forces can use their discretion, the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) suggests the following when enforcing speed limits:
| Speed limit | Min speed for a speeding ticket | Min speed for prosecution |
|---|---|---|
|
20 mph |
25 mph |
35 mph |
|
30 mph |
35 mph |
50 mph |
|
40 mph |
46 mph |
66 mph |
|
50 mph |
57 mph |
76 mph |
|
60 mph |
68 mph |
86 mph |
|
70 mph |
79 mph |
96 mph |
If a car is seen speeding, the registered keeper will receive a Notice of Intended Prosecution (NIP) that has details of the offence, and a document called a Section 172 notice or an Article 177 notice in Northern Ireland. You must respond within 28 days, using the Section 172 or Article 177 notice to nominate the person who was driving at the time of the alleged offence. Not doing so is a separate, specific offence that could lead to a fine and penalty points being added to your licence. If the police stopped you for speeding, the officer can give you a verbal warning of prosecution instead. An NIP is not required if the offence happened as part of a road traffic accident.
The police must serve a NIP within 14 days of the alleged offence, but there are circumstances in which the notice will still stand even if it is later than this, for example, if the delay was the driver’s fault because they have not told the DVLA or the DVA of a recent change of address.
With most minor speeding offences, when you return the NIP, you’ll receive a Conditional Offer of a Fixed Penalty Notice (FPN). You can choose to either pay this and accept the penalty points or, if you don’t think the ticket is correct, contest the charge in court. When deciding whether to contest a speeding charge you should bear in mind that in court the prosecution’s role is simply to prove that a driver was speeding. Defences such as you did not intend to speed, didn’t know you were going too fast or only exceeded the speed limit for a short time will not be taken into consideration.
For more detailed information on how to contest a speeding ticket see our section ‘being charged with speeding’.
If you already have more than eight points on your licence, or if you were travelling considerably in excess of the speed limit, the police may choose to prosecute you in court. In this case, you will be sent a court summons. The police have up to 6 months from the date of the offence to start proceedings.
Northern Ireland and Scotland both operate very similar systems of enforcement to the rest of the UK when it comes to speeding offences.
As in England and Wales, the Police Service of Northern Ireland can issue Endorsable Fixed Penalty Tickets (EFPN) to speeding drivers at the roadside, or a Conditional Offer of an EFPN through the post for drivers not stopped at the time of the alleged offence or caught on camera. The penalty for an EFPT is the same as in the rest of the UK – a £60 fine and 3 penalty points.
A Notice of Intended Prosecution must be served within 14 days, and the registered keeper is legally obliged to name the driver and return the documentation within 21 days of the date of the notice.
If penalty points are imposed upon a driver, they must declare them as a conviction for five years. Like in the rest of the UK, penalty points are active on a driving licence for three years after the offence, and a new license can be applied for after four years.
Northern Irish drivers who commit speeding offences in Britain are able to accept endorsement points on their licence by applying to the DVLA for a GB counterpart licence. This allows drivers to take advantage of the fixed penalty system rather than going to court. A GB counterpart licence can be obtained free of charge by filling in a D9 form, available at the Post Office.
Scottish proceedings operate in much the same way except that while in England and Wales officers can issue a FPN to a driver they stop, in Scotland Conditional Offers are always used.
A further difference relates to unpaid fixed penalties. In England and Wales, unpaid fixed penalties (both conditional and penalties issued at the time of an offence) are registered with the offender’s local court for payment, but in Scotland the original offence is reported to the Procurator Fiscal for prosecution and any non-payment will normally be referred to the district court.
