How long can a council keep an appeal

Kivell

I received a ticket from Trafford council for not displaying a ticket (I didn't buy one as machine was broken).

I appeal the PCN on the Monday via email and received an auto response

"Thank you for your enquiry.
We are currently experiencing a high volume of enquiries which may result in a delay in responding of several weeks.
If you have submitted a parking appeal, your case will be placed on hold until a response can be sent."

My question is how long can the council hold you in limbo?
I don't want this hanging over me for weeks/months. I also don't want to forget about it and not notice a response on a random day and end up paying more.

Kivell

I also included photo evidence with appeal, but I can't seem to add that here.

Coupon-mad

They have to get to NTO (postal PCN sent to the owner) stage within six months of this 'driver' stage.

Normally they will respond after about a month, OF COURSE rejecting the appeal (I hope you realise how the game works?). They'll dangle the carrot of the [STRIKE]discount[/STRIKE] bribe again too - how generous...not.

Most people can in fact win appeals at NTO or (3rd stage) an 'adjudication' meeting like they show Caroline Sheppard doing on the TV show 'Parking Wars'. But councils dangle that discount like it's some sort of bargain and make people think a rejection is final.

There are 3 stages here, should be resolved after Christmas. That IS NOT a reason to just pay! The maximum risk is the PCN sum.

If the machine was broken, did it direct you to another nearby machine or offer pay-by-phone as an alternative?