Discounts - not offered - a new trend

In 2024 Mr Mustard and other experts noted a number of rejections in which enforcement authorities in London stopped offering the discount when issuing official Notices of Rejection which open the door to the independent tribunal.

Motorists often complain that the penalty has doubled and he pedantically points out that is not tree, it simply hasn't halved, it was always £130, £110, £80 or whatever the case may be.

Let us start with a PCN placed on your vehicle.

You can describe the 50% discount as a sweetener, an incentive or a bribe as you like. If you are bang to rights then the discount is worth taking advantage of. It speeds up the process, saves administration costs and time and puts the PCN behind you. The statutory guidance of the Secretary of State requires if a PCN is placed on your car on the 1st of the month and your informal challenge, as it is known, reached the council by the 14th of the month (that is day 14 as the 1st is counted as day 1, a common error is to add 14 not 13) then if that challenge is rejected the 50% discount must be offered again for 14 days. The PCN will also state this.

What has usually happened, as it was easier, is that all informal challenges for at least the first 28 days (and longer if the Notice to Owner was not issued promptly), were met with a templated rejection that offered the discount again for 14 days from receipt of the letter (sometimes the date of the letter) in an attempt to 'get rid' of a PCN. It was a system that worked as most motorists don't have Mr Mustard's staying power.

When the Notice to Owner is issued discounts are officially no longer available. However, for those tougher motorists who make formal representations, which can be identical to the informal challenge, it doesn't matter if the council have said no once already, most councils still offered the discount again for another 14 days.

The reason is simple. Councils would rather have quick money and an easy life. If the motorist starts an Appeal to the independent adjudicator at London Tribunals, as Mr Mustard does for nearly every PCN he fights, the council in question will have to produce the evidence pack containing all of the documents from both sides about the PCN, the traffic order, photos of signs and a written summary of the case. This will take 2 or 3 hours so is expensive. In addition, there is a fee which they have to pay to fund the tribunal setup of c.£30 for each PCN appeal started whether or not it goes ahead and win or lose. Costs are very rare so can largely be ignored.

In 2024 Mr Mustard, and other experts who swap notes and advice, noticed a trend at the formal representations stage (after the Notice to Owner) that the sum demanded in the Notice of Rejection was the 100% figure. They know that many motorists are a bit afraid of the tribunal although they don't need to be, it is an informal forum and therefore rather than doing something new the tendency in the past was to pay up the 50%. Now that some councils are asking for 100% and going to the tribunal doesn't cost the motorist anything except a little time (and from next month your hearing can be on Microsoft Teams so you don't need to go to Chancery Lane) it appears to the experts that there is no incentive to meekly pay up like a mug provided you have at least a bit of an argument (not a load of silly baloney). It will be interesting to see if more Appeals are made in 2025.

This policy change will make no difference to Mr Mustard. He tries to educate his motorists from the off that he tries to find arguments that could work at the tribunal (he is usually only 91% accurate and at least one other expert is more successful) and sets out his stall from the beginning to fight to the end. Sometimes he realises an existing argument will no longer work but picks up a new one along the way so his trip along the high wire can be a bit exciting.

The other point in favour of motorists is that if councils can't keep up with surges in Appeals they sometimes just let them go and cancel the PCN to save time. This is known as the DNC process (Do not contest). Mr Mustard had 54 DNC cases in 2024 (very few from Barnet) across his 300+ cases.

Looking now at moving traffic PCNs for yellow box junctions, banned turns etc there is only one challenge to the council before the tribunal. Again most councils used to always offer the discount again when rejected you but the law does not require them to offer it at all. Moving traffic legislation is quite blunt. If you pay within 14 days of the date on the PCN you can definitely have the discount, otherwise not. If you challenge on day 10 and get rejected on day 20 a council can insist on 100% being paid (or watch you go to Appeal). Many motorists think of these PCNs the same as parking ones as years ago there were mostly parking PCN and not much else but given the wide implementation of 'school streets' and other 'low traffic neighbourhoods' the numbers of these PCNs has mushroomed.

If we finally consider London bus lane PCNs you get sent a PCN and then if still unpaid an Enforcement Notice. Again if you don't pay the PCN within 14 days the discount could be gone. The Enforcement Notice, just like the Notice to Owner in parking, does not include a discount offer. The informal rejection and the Notice of Rejection may include a discount offer but they don't have to (unless the council documents says otherwise in which case out of fairness the offer must be honoured).

Now, finally, to the trend which has been witnessed.

Mr Mustard had a look through recent Notices of Rejection and found that the following councils did not offer the discount as an incentive to pay up rather than start a tribunal Appeal. Mr Mustard started Appeals for them all as he is confident in his arguments.

Enfield

Islington

Camden

Redbridge

Haringey

Brent

Mr Mustard will add other councils to this list as he notices them. It isn't necessarily the case that these councils won't sometimes offer a discount, it may depend how strong they think the case is, a sort of cost benefit analsysis. What Mr Mustard hasn't done is ask any questions about council policy. He will do so when he finds some time.

Mr Mustard's advice is simple. Do all your work at the start and decide if you want to fight or fold. If you want to fight, put all of your energy into it, no half measures.

The end

PCN - retain the discount & gain time to pay

So it is the 1st of the month and you have received a parking ticket or a bus lane contravention. You accept you were in the wrong and want to take advantage of the 50% discount but you are stony broke at the moment. If you pay the amount now you will be short of food or travel to work money. What do you do?

(First of all if the PCN is for parking and sent to you by post you either have to pay the 50% amount within 14 days or the full amount within 28 days. You can slow down the full amount but you lose the chance to pay at a discount.)

The 14 days starts from the date of the PCN and includes the first day, so for a PCN issued on 1 June the 14th day will be the 14 June (i.e. add 13 to the date). You can appeal using the council's computer which is a horrible straitjacket and doesn't give you a copy of your challenge, so Mr Mustard almost never uses it.

You can appeal by post but somehow they can "go missing" so Mr Mustard uses the signed for service to be sure.

Best of all is to use the email method. They don't directly advertise this on the council website or put it on the PCN but do accept representations by this method as that is how all of Mr Mustard's are done. 

The address, which shows on this link, is barnet@nslservices.co.uk

If writing Mr Mustard would wait only until day 10 and then send in your challenge.

If using the on-line system or email he would still only go as far as day 12 or 13 and then send in the challenge.

In theory this freezes the PCN from progressing until the council reply. They try to do this within 14 days but often don't manage to do so. Then they must re-offer the 14 days discount period again. If they don't they have committed a procedural impropriety (otherwise known as a blunder) and then you might as well appeal through the next two stages (in response to the Notice to Owner and after that if rejected to PATAS) which will take another 3 to 6 months and give you more time to pay up should you lose. Do ask Mr Mustard for advice if this happens to you.

If they do offer the discount again then you are most probably into the month of July and got past payday and achieved your objective.

There is always the chance that your challenge will be accepted and the PCN cancelled and then you won't have to pay anything at all. Some recent figures show, although Mr Mustard has asked for them to be looked at again as he thinks they are wrong, that of 1354 initial challenges to PCN in March 14, 252 of those PCN were subsequently cancelled (although not necessarily straight away) so that is about a 1 in 6 chance.

The more that PCN are challenged the less profitable it becomes for the council. Together we can make them behave more reasonably.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard