Free Traffic Legal Advice

Time is always allowed to pay for parking once parked, or nobody could ever park legally !

As this is Havering, it's a total no-brainer now to take them all the way to London Tribunals as the penalty remains the same and there are no additional costs whatsoever. You took rather a time to get a permit but the reason was their website as far as I can deduce from your narrative.

Can you post your informal reps, please. In order to get them to London Tribunals, you first have to submit formal reps and get them rejected. Make them do some work as they are a disgusting council refusing informal reps and not re-offering the discount. Disgraceful, frankly.

Your reps state that you encountered technical difficulties logging in, whereas your first post says that a friend had difficulty getting into the portal to purchase a visitor's permit.

In either case, IMO you would struggle at adjudication unless there's some evidence of this issue or a more detailed description of the problems. Their statements are that the car was observed from 10.50 and that the permit was not purchased until 11.06, 11 minutes after the contravention occurred.

Presumably your friend is the resident permit holder, in which case IMO a statement from them would be the minimum you would need.