Free Traffic Legal Advice
Live cases legal advice => Civil penalty charge notices (Councils, TFL and so on) => Topic started by: steve61 on July 22, 2024, 08:29:34 am
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Summary: 3 PCNs received due to lack of communication about inception of payment for resident permits for electric vehicles (EVs) plus highly misleading RingGo permit portal.
We have had a Brent Resident Parking Permit for an EV for more than 10 years. During that time, the annual cost of that permit has always been zero. However, when Brent communicated the move from the old parking permit system (DASH) to the new permit portal (RingGo) – will supply email dated August 2023 – the change to charging for EV permits was not mentioned. Therefore, our assumption when renewing this permit was that the charge was still zero and we were not expecting to pay anything.
Having received notifications that the previous permit was shortly due to expire, we followed the new process of creating a RingGo account in order to renew our EV permit. The first time we attempted to do this, we got the message "Sorry we could not find any parking zones for this address. If you feel this is a mistake, please contact parking.permits@brent.gov.uk". They subsequently rectified this - will supply email dated March 2024 - but I mention it as I thought it might be useful as evidence we were attempting to renew the permit.
We then made another attempt to renew the permit and when we reached this screen – see Imgur link showing screenshot of RingGo account dated 18/4/24 – and read the statement “Below is a list of your current permits and their status” followed by a box stating “Authorised Resident Permit (28427105) … Expires: 29 March 2026 …LC63JUV in CPZ KQ, Permits,” our assumption was that the process had been completed, since there was no reasonable signposting that any payment was required. There are some fairly small icons saying "edit/renew/purchase" but the whole page is highly misleading.
We were away on holiday when the first 2 PCNs were issued (the car was not moved during this time) but on finding them, I phoned the Brent Parking helpline to clarify why they had been issued when we believed we had renewed our EV permit as I genuinely believed it was another mistake on their/RingGo's part, like the previous one with our address. The person I spoke to asked if I had received an email confirming payment. When I said I had not, they said that therefore I should have known I had not renewed the permit. But this did not make sense to me as there had been no prior communication informing us that we would now have to pay for an EV permit or any such reference on the RingGo permit portal. It was only after several further calls to the helpline that I was able to establish what the new procedure was and successfully renew the permit and in the interim the third PCN was issued.
The current status is that I appealed the PCNs but they were rejected and we are now at the Notice to Owner etc stage (they were dated 8 July). I have already submitted a Challenge for the first PCN fairly similar to what I have related above as I only just discovered this forum. I would appreciate any help/advice with how to fight this as it feels unjust - I'm prepared to go to an independent adjudicator but obviously would reconsider if someone here with expertise tells me I'm wasting my time.
PCN 1 https://imgur.com/49iNctr
PCN 2 https://imgur.com/At90sWS
PCN 3 https://imgur.com/si8QI9M
Ringgo permit portal screenshot https://imgur.com/3BI7swG
(I have Imgur links for all of the above if the links do not appear here)