Here you go:
Dear Bristol City Council,
I challenge liability for PCN BS57305939 on the basis that the penalty demanded exceeds the amount due in the circumstances of the case.
The PCN carries an 0870 premium rate telephone number, and I contend that as in Paul Bateman v Derbyshire County Council this amounts to an excessive demand, a copy of that decision can be viewed at LINK1
While I appreciate other payment methods are available, binding authority from the High Court in the case of London Borough of Camden v The Parking Adjudicator & Ors available from LINK2 determined that where one payment method carries a surcharge, the availability of other payment methods is irrelevant and the penalty demanded is excessive.
Further to this, the penalty charge notice is only permitted to demand payment of the penalty charge, there is no legal mechanism that allows the council to demand the toll charge in addition to the penalty charge on the PCN.
This is akin to a PCN for not paying in a pay and display bay: you can issue a PCN for £70 but the penalty charge notice cannot demand the unpaid pay and display fee on top of that. On this point, I refer you to the decision in Luke Moran v Secretary of State for Transport available from LINK3
In this case the PCN may only demand £120, discounted to £60 for the first 14 days. The regulations do not allow the PCN to demand the additional £9 you are seeking, the amount demanded therefore exceeds the amount due by law.
It follows that the penalty charge must be cancelled.
Yours faithfully,
I will PM you some links to put in the representation, they will redirect to
here,
https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2011/295.html and
here but if you give them the links I'll PM you, we can use the click count to confirm whether they've looked at them or not (obviously do not click on the links I PM you as we want the click count to remain at zero). If they don't click on them, we can then prove they've failed to consider all of the evidence. If they say in the rejection that they've considered all the evidence, we've got them for lying as well.
If Bristol rejects, I'll be happy to represent you at the tribunal.
Send the representation online and do not remove any words from the text, if there's a character / word limit, just put the representation into a PDF file and upload it to the council website as an attachment.
Keep a screenshot of the confirmation page.
