Free Traffic Legal Advice

• Mr XXXX does not dispute the contravention itself. Instead, he argues that there have been two failures by the Council to follow the correct procedure. Firstly, he has produced evidence from DVLA that the first contact it had with the Council was on 21 July, substantially outside the 28 day time period for serving the penalty charge notice. Secondly, the Notice of Rejection incorrectly quotes the 2005 Regulations, rather than the more recent 2022 Regulations. This suggests that when it considered his representations, it applied the wrong in law.
  
• The Council has produced the case status report, which is a record of when actions in the case took place. This indicates that the contravention itself occurred on 26 May, and the electronic request to DVLA for the registered keeper’s details was sent on 3 June. An incomplete response was then received from DVLA on 1 July, which resulted in the fault being automatically flagged up at the same time. On 21 July the matter was then reviewed and a further VQ4 request made to DVLA. This is the request to which Mr XXXX’s DVLA correspondence refers. I am satisfied that the initial VQ4 request was sent on 3 June, because the incomplete response from DVLA must have been served in response to receiving it.
  
• I therefore find that the penalty charge notice was served outside the statutory 28 days, but since the Council had sent a VQ4 request within the first 14 days, and had not received a satisfactory response within the 28 days, the law therefore granted the Council an additional 6 months to obtain the details and serve the penalty charge notice. No procedural impropriety occurred.
  
• Regarding the wording of the Notice of Rejection, the law only requires the Council to consider the formal representations received, and indicate whether or not they are accepted. If the person receiving the Notice of Rejection believes that the Council has come to an incorrect decision, or applied the law incorrectly, the remedy is to appeal against the Notice of Rejection to the Tribunal, which Mr XXXX has done. Quoting the wrong legislation in a Notice of Rejection does not mean that the Council is guilty of procedural impropriety.
  
• I can therefore identify no grounds for allowing this appeal. The penalty of £70 must be paid within 28 days.

The DVLA log shows that the request (VQ4) was received on the 21st July 2025 and the result (VQ5) was provided the next working day, ie the 22nd July 2025 . So well outside the 28 days provided to issue and serve a PCN.

There is nothing in the DVLA record to support requests having being made on the 3rd June 2025 or at any time before the 21st July 2025. Or that the DVLA failed to respond to any such request.

The V5c registration document for the car was last updated on the 11th August 2024, so the DVLA held the registered keeper's name and address well before the 26th May 2025, the date of the alleged contravention.

The DVLA is the statutory holder and guardian of the data requested, I would suggest that the DVLA's record of enquiries is definitive. The authority might well have intended to request the registered keepers details on the 3rd June however the VQ4 was clearly not actually received by the DVLA. This further suggests a computer or electronic communication failure at the enforcement authorities end.

In any event, even assuming that a request (VQ4) was ever successfully submitted, which is not supported by the facts, to the DVLA on June 3rd 2025 there has been an unreasonable delay with follow-up by the enforcement authority when the expected response failed to arrive. The authority would know very well that a reply should be received the next working day. The authority should have followed up with the DVLA when the response (VQ5) failed to arrive. Waiting until the 27th July 2025 is plainly unreasonable and unjust.

A reasonable person would expect that the authority has routine audit programs running on it's computer systems designed to detect and capture failed transactions and procedures in place to rectify identified cases within the statutory timeframes.