Free Traffic Legal Advice

I have just received a PCN for driving my 1999 Mazda MX-5, which is not ULEZ compliant, through Croydon, within the expanded ULEZ zone.

I am not going to use this platform to debate the rights and wrongs of ULEZ. My blood pressure is bad enough as it is.

I live in outer London and I don't want to pay £12.50 every time I take the car off my driveway, so I have a compliant car and drive the non-compliant car once in a blue moon. The last time I drove it was August (2024), and after logging in to the TFL website to pay the £12.50 I decided to register the car for ULEZ autopay. I am certain I did register the car for ULEZ autopay in August.

The TFL road user charging website is not easy to navigate and it's full of minefields. I am also aware that TFL sustained a major cyber attack in September 2024 which crippled much of their public transport user payments/refunds infrastructure, which had a lasting impact over several months. I am wondering if the cyberattack also affected the road user charging website or underlying databases.

I drove the car down to Dorset on Saturday 30th November. I drove it back to Greater London on Sunday 1st December.

On the Wednesday of the following week (4th Dec) I suddenly thought - hey, should I have received some sort of ULEZ auto pay receipt? I logged in to the TFL road user charging website to find no record of any ULEZ payment on 30th Nov or 1st Dec, and no car registered for ULEZ autopay under my account.

I called TFL in a panic and asked why my car had dropped off my ULEZ autopay account. They couldn't give me an answer, but they did let me pay the ULEZ £12.50 for Sunday 1st December over the phone. They weren't going to let me pay the ULEZ for Saturday 30th November as it was "too late", even though I explained how my autopay had failed for some reason, and I was never intending to avoid paying ULEZ.

This morning (Monday 16th December) I received a PCN issued on 7th December for non payment of ULEZ on 30th November. I can only assume the PCN was delayed in the post thanks to the Christmas rush.

Do I have any grounds for appeal here? I am certain I registered the car for ULEZ autopay in August. I had never made any automatic payments since registering the car for autopay as I simply had not driven the car.

PCN attached. Can anyone advise?

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When you registered the Mazda for AutoPay last August I would have expected TFL to email an acknowledgement. This would have been sent to the email address used when you registered for AutoPay.

So did you receive an email? Spam folder checked?

I can't find any such email. Does anyone know exactly what they look like? Subject lines? Sender email addresses?

So what happens when you try to log on to your autopay account ? If TfL have no record of it, clearly something went wrong when you set it up.  I'm also just thinking that setting up in August and not using it until November may have caused it to be suspended.

Looks like when you set up the account you didn't add the vehicle reg number.