Your ticket
Penalty Charge Notice: how a council PCN works, date by date
Independent site, not a council, operator or appeals service. You pay or appeal only through the channel printed on your notice.
Choose who issued the notice, its amount and how it reached you: the countdown gives each deadline and what you would pay on that day.
Next: Last day for the reduced rate
8 November 2026
13 days left · £35
| Last day for the reduced rate14 days beginning with the day the notice was served. Pay £35 instead of £70. | 8 November 2026£35 |
| Informal challenge, to keep the reduced rateWrite to the council before this date: if it rejects the challenge it may offer the reduced rate again. | 8 November 2026 |
| Notice to Owner can be posted (earliest)Sent to the registered keeper if nothing is paid in 28 days. From then on the full £70 is due. | 23 November 2026£70 |
| Formal representations (earliest)28 days beginning with the day the Notice to Owner is served. The date counts from your Notice to Owner: this is the earliest it can fall. | 22 December 2026 |
| Charge certificate (earliest)If nothing is paid or challenged, the charge rises by 50% to £105. | 23 December 2026£105 |
| Order for recovery (earliest)14 days after the charge certificate the council can register the debt at the county court; you then have 21 days for a witness statement. | 6 January 2027£105 |
The Notice to Owner must be served within 6 months of the notice (SI 2022/71 reg 20).
A Penalty Charge Notice, or PCN, is the civil penalty a council or Transport for London issues for a parking, bus lane or moving traffic contravention. In England it rests on Part 6 of the Traffic Management Act 2004 and on regulations made in 2022 that fix the levels, the dates and the appeal route, so unlike a private parking charge it does not depend on a contract: the amount is set by law and, if it stays unpaid, it climbs on a fixed scale. Outside London the penalty is £40 to £70; in London it runs from £90 to £160. Paying within 14 days of service halves it, or within 21 days when a camera notice comes by post. After 28 days without payment a Notice to Owner can go to the registered keeper, and if that is ignored a charge certificate adds 50%. You can challenge at each stage, and an independent adjudicator has the last word.
How much is my council PCN now?
You pay
£35
| Penalty on the notice | £70 |
| Reduced rate (50% off) | £35 |
| After a charge certificate (+50%) | £105 |
Band and rate are printed on the notice with the contravention code. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have no bands.
Rules, amounts and dates read by Radif Partners · Editorial policy · Method
What makes a PCN different from other tickets
Three kinds of paper end up under a windscreen wiper. A Penalty Charge Notice comes from a council or from Transport for London and is headed with those words. A Fixed Penalty Notice comes from the police. A Parking Charge Notice comes from a private company. Only the first is governed by the Traffic Management Act 2004, and only the first follows the statutory ladder described on this page: reduced rate, Notice to Owner, charge certificate, order for recovery. If you are not sure which one you hold, the ticket checker reads it for you in four questions, and our side-by-side comparison goes into the differences.
The amounts in England, Wales and London
| Where | Higher rate | Lower rate | Paid at the reduced rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| England outside London, band 1 | £60 | £40 | £30 or £20 |
| England outside London, band 2 | £70 | £50 | £35 or £25 |
| London, band A | £160 | £110 | £80 or £55 |
| London, band B | £140 | £90 | £70 or £45 |
| Wales | £70 | £50 | £35 or £25 |
The higher rate covers the contraventions the regulations treat as more serious: parking where waiting or loading is banned, on a dropped footway, in a disabled bay without a badge, at a bus stop, or in a bus lane. The lower rate covers things like overstaying a paid bay. The band your council uses, and the rate of your contravention, are printed on the notice with a contravention code. Scotland and Northern Ireland follow their own scales, covered on our Scotland and Northern Ireland pages.
A windscreen PCN, day by day
Take a band 2 higher-rate notice fixed to a car outside London on 2 November 2026. The reduced rate of £35 is open for 14 days beginning with that day, so until 15 November 2026. If nothing is paid, the council may post a Notice to Owner from 30 November 2026, and must do so within 6 months. The keeper then has 28 days to pay £70 or make formal representations. If neither happens, a charge certificate raises the debt to £105, and 14 days later the council can register it at the county court (SI 2022/71, regulations 10 and 20 to 22).
The countdown at the top of the page does the same arithmetic for your own date and amount, marks the dates that depend on a later letter as the earliest they can fall, and lets you save the whole list to your calendar.
Three moments to challenge
- Informal challenge, as soon as you get a windscreen notice: write to the council, ideally within the 14 days, with photographs and receipts. GOV.UK explains that if this is rejected you may still be offered the reduced rate (GOV.UK: parking tickets).
- Formal representations after the Notice to Owner, within 28 days, on one of the grounds listed in the appeal regulations. The council has 56 days to decide (SI 2022/576). Our formal representations page lists the grounds.
- Appeal to the adjudicator within 28 days of the notice of rejection: the Traffic Penalty Tribunal outside London and in Wales, London Tribunals in the capital. See our tribunal guide.
The appeal letter builder writes the first two for you from ticked reasons. It is a drafting aid: the council and the adjudicator decide.
What this site does not do
We cannot see your notice in a council system, pay it, or appeal for you. Payment and challenges go only through the website, address or phone line printed on the notice. Every figure here comes from the regulations and official pages listed below, read on 26 October 2026.