Free Traffic Legal Advice

Responsibility in law for PCNs rests with the owner of the vehicle and is assumed to be the name and address on the V5C Registration Certificate for the vehicle. So whilst you can informally challenge the PCN, if they reject your representations, and you want to take the matter further, the owner of the vehicle must wait for the Notice to Owner. This will only be served if the PCN is not paid following rejection of the informal challenge. You can act on behalf of the owner, provided you obtain authority from the owner in the form of a letter of authority. This letter allows you to progress the matter all the way to a hearing at London Tribunals, but if the case is lost, payment of the PCN remains the responsibility of the owner, not you. So clearly you would need to reassure your electrican that in the event of losing the case, you will pay him the penalty money.

Please post up the emails between you and Lewisham. If these were considered by Lewisham as an informal challenge, the next stage is the Notice to Owner.  I have assumed up to now that the owner is the electrician, but it may not be if he is leasing the van, or is an employee of an electrical company.

Hi both! Thanks so much for your responses.
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I don't have a better photo of the PCN unfortunately. In response to your other comments/queries:
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Yes the PCN was issued on the 6th in the morning, I filled in the online form to challenge it on the 6th, then it was denied in a matter of... hours I think? I've posted the PDF response here:
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Page 1: https://cdn.imgpile.com/f/mg9owSl_xl.png
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Page 2: https://cdn.imgpile.com/f/OnidDSO_xl.png
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Page 3: https://cdn.imgpile.com/f/TwPswJT_xl.png
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That's the response as far as I understand from the 'official' challenge form (vs emailing in to the council itself and asking for it to be vacated on grounds of their system not working - and those messages have basically said it's not their department, they can't do anything, I have to go through the PCN process).
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I note that in that response letter, there's no statutory challenge for broken infrastructure which seems... quite short sighted given the general poor state of repair of a variety of council owned and/or run things, either physical or digital. There's language about 'other representations' but I'm not sure whether this type of case would even be considered (or if it's the excuse everyone uses, and unless you personally have concrete proof with screen shots - would those even be considered proof? - you'll be presumed guilty of not paying and be ruled against)
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Since I wrote this up, I've asked the council for their web logs that would show my login attempts (effectively, frustrated intent to pay). They've denied that they have these, though it was unclear whether the person responding had knowledge sufficient to conclusively make this determination. When I asked for a supervisor who perhaps would have more knowledge of what was available, the person said I had to complain to the council to get a response. I've done so, and they've reiterated the only way to get a PCN vacated is to wait for the Notice to Owner to go out, ignoring the issue of logs, and general stonewalling, completely.
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My concern is that if I take this to the tribunal but can't substantiate my intent (because I didn't screen shot each failure and didn't immediately email the council to say their website wasn't working, and the council refuses to send logs of my login attempts or their server uptime/downtime), that I'll be stung with costs far in excess of 80GBP. The added wrinkle of it's my electrician's car (I believe it's his vehicle either owned by himself outright or his company) and the financial  liability would legally rest on him, even if I'm able to get a Letter of Authority from him, means I'm leaning towards just paying the 80GBP and being done with it.
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Having never gotten nor challenged a PCN however, I wasn't sure whether there was anything that could be done about it, nor what the consequences could be if I took it to the tribunal and was rejected (apart from the 160GBP costs, what scale of additional costs would normally be assessed? 200GBP? 500GBP? More?)
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Thanks again for taking the time to respond!