Did Merton Council ignore our appeal?

Sara82

Hi everyone hope I can be given some advice as at the moment I'm pretty annoyed...possibly at myself! On 25/01/2017 my husband received a PCN notice from Merton Council. We decided to appeal it, so on the 04/02/2017 I sent an appeal to Merton Council by email. I would usually do it on the website, but found it hard to navigate. Today 24/02/2017 we have received a Charge certificate for £195. It hasnt given a specific reason why the charge has increased, but rather generic reasons...such as us not appealing, they rejected the appeal and we didnt appeal the rejection and so on.
I still have the email in my sent folder, but I realised that I didnt include our home address in the email...which it says you must do. Is that why it has increased? I will be so annoyed with myself if that is the case....but I also feel that is insanely harsh! Any advice would be appreciated
Thank you for your time

Barny1979

Sounds too quick to jump to a charge certificate stage, as this takes much longer, see the following link for a PCN process: https://www.patrol-uk.info/ Link has a flow chart of the stages of appeal.

Sara82

Thank you very much for the reply...do you think by forgetting to put the address they ignored our appeal?

Orford

Was the original pcn placed on your vehicle or was it sent by post (cctv contravention)?

Sara82

Sent by post

Sara82

As Barny says it seems like it was very quick...a month between receiving the charge and them giving us a charge notice, so it seems like the appeal was ignored (hopefully not because I forgot to add our address)

Sara82

I did receive an email from them to confirm they received my email representation.

Barny1979

I would write back to them querying whether they have received your representation, as usually by receiving an informal rep or not, it then goes to formal representation stage, not straight to Charge Certificate.

Sara82

Hi thank you for replying...I did receive an email that said they had received my representation...so they did get it...I will need to contact them on Monday by phone to see what's going on....do people think they rejected my appeal because I didn't include the address in the email....I included reg number and pcn number and name.

Barny1979

They would have replied asking for your address, as they will put this against the registered owner's details. However, otherwise, they will have gone to the DVLA to get the address details, hence receiving the Charge Certificate. You will need to call them, but then follow anything up in writing, as appeals can not be done by phone.

Orford

Sara82 wrote: »

Hi thank you for replying...I did receive an email that said they had received my representation...so they did get it...I will need to contact them on Monday by phone to see what's going on....do people think they rejected my appeal because I didn't include the address in the email....I included reg number and pcn number and name.

Councils will not accept representations without name and address, which is why they didn't reply.

My advice is not to phone them, but wait for the Order for Recovery and make a witness statement to the Traffic Enforcement Centre on the grounds that you didn't recieve a Notice of Rejection to your representations. Don't mention the address issue.

That will set the pcn back to the Notice to Owner stage at which point you can eithet pay the full penalty (£130) or make formal reps and, if those are rejected, appeal to adjudication