When to appeal a parking ticket

You can appeal a ticket if you think you were parked correctly. For example, if a parking attendant thinks you stayed too long when you were in fact within the time limit.

By law, a Penalty Charge Notice (PCN) from the local council – issued on public land, such as a high street – must be cancelled if you didn’t break the parking rules. You can check these rules on GOV.UK or on signs near where you parked.

When you park on private land, such as a supermarket car park, the terms and conditions of using the car park should be made clear on nearby signs. If you are given a Parking Charge Notice, the burden of proof is on the parking company to show that you didn’t stick to their terms and conditions. 

If you were parked correctly, you may wish to appeal and supply evidence to prove this. 

See Parking tickets issued by the police, Parking tickets issued by the local council or Parking tickets on private land for the types of evidence you can use.

All car parks and roads with parking restrictions must have signs or road markings that make this clear. You may wish to appeal on the basis that:

• you couldn’t see any road markings or signs

• the signs or markings were hard to read – for example they’d faded, the writing was too small, they were too high, or they were hidden by trees

• the signs were misleading or confusing

• the signs were not adequately lit at night 

• there weren’t any signs saying parking was suspended.

You should also win your appeal if you were sent a ticket in the post and there weren’t signs saying CCTV – or an automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) system – was in use where you parked.

See Parking tickets issued by the police or Parking tickets issued by the local council for the evidence you may wish to supply.

Your ticket should be cancelled if a parking meter or machine was broken and there was no other way to pay. Your appeal is likely to be unsuccessful if there was another machine you could have used.

If a parking meter or machine has not been updated for the new £1 coin you may use this as your reason for appealing the ticket. However if the meter or machine takes other denominations of coins to pay for your ticket or there was a phone number to use to pay this may affect your success in making the appeal.

If you get a Penalty Charge Notice (PCN), which is a parking ticket issued by the local council, the amount you’re charged will fall into a higher or lower band. You’ll be charged the higher band for a more serious offence, like parking on a double yellow line. The lower band is for something less serious, like parking for longer than your ticket allows.

You should appeal if you’ve been charged too much for a PCN. For example if your offence should be in the lower band but you’ve been charged the higher band amount. You can find out from your local council how much they charge. You can find your local council on mygov.scot.  

If you’ve been given a Parking Charge Notice, the BPN and IPC rules state you shouldn’t be charged more than £100 – unless the parking company can prove your parking offence made them lose this additional money. You should appeal if you’ve been charged more than £100 and think this extra cost is unjustified.  

Read about how to appeal your parking ticket in Parking tickets on private land. 

You didn’t commit the parking error so the ticket should be cancelled. See appealing a parking ticket when someone else was driving for more information. 

You should appeal your ticket if you couldn’t get back to your car because:

• it’s difficult for you to walk because you’re disabled

• you are pregnant

• you have a very young baby.

The Equality Act 2010 means you must be treated with understanding and can’t be discriminated against, so the ticket should be cancelled.

You have a strong reason to appeal if your car broke down while you were parked – the ticket issuer should understand that you couldn’t move it. See Parking tickets issued by the police, Parking tickets issued by the local council or Parking tickets on private land for the types of evidence to include in your appeal.

It could be worth appealing if you were only a few minutes late.

You might be given 5 or 10 minutes after your parking runs out, called a grace period. There's no fixed length for a grace period - it depends on the code of conduct of the parking company or the local council. You should be given a reasonable amount of time to leave a car park if you decide not to park.

A parking company might disagree with your appeal if they time your stay from the moment you entered the car park, rather than from when you parked. It’s still worth appealing because it’s free to informally appeal. You have to do this before you can appeal to an independent tribunal or trade association.

Read more about:

• parking tickets issued by the police

• parking tickets issued by the local council

• parking tickets on private land.