PCN Law

PCNs and Civil Enforcement

The law relating to PCNs is far from straightforward. PCNs give the impression that you have been found guilty of some motoring offence and need to pay a fine. You are offered a 50% discount if you pay it within 14 days. While paying that discounted rate may well be the most cost-effective approach, it is worth understanding just what is going on.

PCNs are issued as part of civil enforcement proceedings. Minor motoring offences used to be handled as part of the criminal law. This involved the police or traffic wardens (now PCSOs) issuing you with a notice that alleged that you had committed some offence. You could accept that allegation and pay the penalty for a parking ticket or get points on your driving licence. Or you could contest it, usually in a magistrates court. Driving licences and the justice system are part of central Government and penalties associated with them flow to central Government.

From the early 1990s, local authorities were able to take over the enforcement of parking offences in their area. Such enforcement was through the civil law: the local authority passed local legislation (traffic orders) which said that you owed them money if you contravened the parking restrictions. If you didn't pay, they could sue you in the courts for what they claimed you owed them.

If you took the case to court, you could argue that the local authority was wrong and that you didn't actually owe them the money which they claimed. For instance, the signs may have been hidden by vegetation, so you didn't know that you weren't allowed to park where you did. The judge would assess the evidence and decide whether the council's claim that you owed them money was correct. If the council had failed adequately to indicate what you could or could not do, their claim against you would fail.

There are other, technical grounds on which you could challenge a claim, for instance that there was something wrong with the procedure, e.g. that the parking ticket was issued too late or missed out some essential information. But the main grounds for challenge are usually about the adequacy of information.

From the late 1990s, enforcement of other types of motoring offences: bus lanes and "moving traffic offences" has increasingly been transferred from the criminal law to the civil law. Local authorities incur the costs of running their civil enforcement schemes but receive the income from penalties.

No Contravention without Adequate Information

It is important to understand that a PCN is about an allegation. It alleges that you have contravened some legislation which is subject to civil enforcement by the local authority. You have not been found guilty. You can contest that allegation. 

If you contest the allegation, you may succeed. In that case, you don't have to pay anything. But you will have spent time, effort and possibly money in the process. You will also have incurred the local authority in a small amount of effort. It has systems in place which process PCNs efficiently at low cost. Costs only become noticeable when a case goes to an adjudicator.

The alternative is to settle the dispute by paying the amount which the council alleges you owe them. This is not an admission of guilt: it's simply a pragmatic acknowledgment that the council has sufficient advantages in the legal process that paying up is the least-cost-and-hassle solution for you.

The PCN presents you with five options to challenge it:

1. I was not the owner of the vehicle at the material time

2. There was no contravention of an order or ...

3. The vehicle was being used without my consent

4. We are a hire firm ...

5. The Penalty Charge exceeded the amount applicable ...

In most cases, the only option which obviously doesn't apply is 2. But how can there have been no contravention of an order if you were parked in the wrong place or went through a bus gate?

The answer is that it is well-established case law that if someone transgresses the terms of a traffic order, no contravention occurs if the local authority has failed to make adequate information available about the traffic order. No contravention also occurs if the council has made some procedural error in issuing the PCN.

R (Neil Herron et al) v The Parking Adjudicator

One of the most important legal cases which restated the law about the adequacy of signage was R (Neil Herron et al) v The Parking Adjudicator [2011] EWCA Civ 905. Neil Herron is a businessman who, in the early 2000s, campaigned against parking restrictions in Sunderland. He had the money and the inclination to challenge those restrictions all the way up to the Court of Appeal, where he lost. 

His loss was nonetheless important, because the judge (Lord Justice Burnton with Lord Justice Aikens and Sir David Keene concurring) restated the law about how traffic orders are to be enforced:

35. It has long been recognised that the enforceability of a [traffic order] requires that adequate notice of the applicable restriction is given to the road user. This principle is derived from the duty imposed by Regulation 18 of [LATOR 1996]. In Macleod v Hamilton 1965 SLT 305 Lord Clyde said, at 308

It was an integral part of the statutory scheme for a traffic regulation order that notice by means of traffic signs should be given to the public using the roads which were restricted so as to warn users of their obligations. Unless these traffic signs were there accordingly and the opportunity was thus afforded to the public to know what they could not legally do, no offence would be committed. It would, indeed, be anomalous and absurd were the position otherwise. ...

36. That principle was approved and applied by the Divisional Court in James v Cavey [1967] 2 QB 676. Giving a judgment with which the other members of the court [Justices Ashworth and Widgery] agreed, [Lord Justice] Winn said:

... The short answer in my view which requires that this appeal should be allowed is that the local authority here did not take such steps as they were required to take under that regulation. They did not take steps which clearly could have been taken and which clearly would have been practicable to cause adequate information to be given to persons using the road by the signs which they erected. …

Implications of Neil Herron

The judgment referenced Regulation 18 of The Local Authorities' Traffic Orders (Procedure) (England and Wales) Regulations 1996 (LATOR). This is concerned with what local authorities must do when they make a traffic order. It requires them to place such traffic signs as they

consider requisite for securing that adequate information as to the effect of the order is made available to persons using the road

This judgment makes it clear that when a local authority places signs to show what a traffic order does, what matters is not the local authority's view as to whether the signage meets the regulations or is adequate. If the signage does not, in fact, provide adequate information to users of the road to warn them of their obligations, then no contravention of the traffic order occurs. 

In assessing the adequacy of the information provided, judges need to take account of what steps the local authority could have taken as well as those which it did take. In other words, the assessment of signage is not just of that which is present but also what could have been placed.

As this judgment was in the Court of Appeal, it is binding on the High Court as well as on tribunals and adjudicators.

Framework of Regulations for Traffic Signs

The Motor Car Act of 1903 required local authorities to 

set up sign posts denoting dangerous corners, cross roads and precipitous places [i.e. steep hills], where such sign posts appear to them to be necessary

It also required them to place signs where they had secured a reduction in the speed limit from 20 mph to 10 mph or less. With the ensuing Circular began our system of traffic signs:

The current equivalent of the 1903 legislation is section 65 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984

The traffic authority may cause or permit traffic signs to be placed on or near a road, subject to and in conformity with [The Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2016] or such other directions as may be given ...

While section 65 is an enabling clause, empowering local authorities to place traffic signs, section 122 imposes the duty

to secure the expeditious, convenient and safe movement of vehicular and other traffic (including pedestrians) ... on and off the highway  

Safe movement of vehicles is secured by placing warning signs before hazards, such as sharp bends. The distance at which the sign is placed depends on the speed of traffic. For speeds up to 30 mph, that distance is 45m (the metric equivalent of the 50 yards specified in the 1904 Circular). 

It is hard to see how placing blue roundels at a restriction complies with this duty without also placing suitable warning signs in advance. Motorists' attention is first to the vehicles around them. This may cause even the most attentive driver to miss signs. Complex signs take longer to read and assimilate. The Statutory Guidance to local authorities about civil enforcement emphasises the need for

clear traffic signing which can readily be understood from a moving vehicle. 

The severity and unexpectedness of a hazard determines the quantity and placing of advance signage. A prohibition which requires a vehicle to turn round is as severe as any. It requires commensurate advance signage.

Legislation can only go so far in specifying what is required in any particular situation. So it is with traffic signs. To complement statutory duties and regulations, the Department for Transport publishes the Traffic Signs Manual. This offers advice about how to use traffic signs and road markings. DfT also publishes various Local Transport Notes which offer guidance on particular topics, e.g. bus-priority measures. 

Regulatory Signage and Coombes v. DPP

Where a restriction is applied to a part of a road, the Regulations require signs showing that restriction to be placed 

as near as practicable to ... the point at which a restriction, requirement or prohibition begins or ends 

Many PCNs are issued for passing regulatory signs placed at the start of a restriction. A simple example is a speed limit. Speed limit signs are distinctive and use large numerals which are easy to read. 

The case Coombes v DPP [2006] EWHC 3263 (Admin) was concerned with 30 mph speed limit signs on each side of the B3139 at West Horrington, Somerset. Overgrown vegetation obscured both signs so that they could only be seen as a driver passed them, but (according to the judgment) there were also two "30" roundel road markings and rumble strips. The image below shows what is believed to be the location in 2016. As the road is one lane in each direction, only the roundel on the left is "30"; that on the right points in the opposite direction and is "40".

The court found that the roundels on the road could not abate any defects in the upright signage, and that any local knowledge which the driver might have had was irrelevant. The key question, with its answer was:

Q: If a driver can only see the speed limit notification signs at the point at which they are passed, are those signs sufficiently erected and maintained in order to sustain a speeding conviction? 

A: There is a requirement that at the geographical point where the motorist exceeded the limit, the requisite signs could reasonably be expected to have conveyed the limit to an approaching motorist in sufficient time for the motorist to reduce from a previous lawful speed to a speed within the new limit. 

Advance Signage and John Dobson Street, Newcastle

John Dobson Street is a substantial thoroughfare in the centre of Newcastle, with the Town Hall at its northern end. The section past the Town Hall was converted to a bus gate without any change to the road layout, so northbound traffic which followed the road entered the bus gate. There was some advance signage but at the start of the bus gate, the only signage was the blue roundels. Drivers of prohibited vehicles had to work out for themselves that they had to turn left into a minor road, turn round in it and then turn right from the minor road to return the way they had come.

In 2015-16 it was the most lucrative bus lane in England. After many protests and appeals, the council agreed to suspend enforcement until a review was carried out by the Chief Adjudicator of the Traffic Penalty Tribunal. In her Review Decision confirming the successful appeals, she quoted Coombes v. DPP and then wrote (with my emboldening in this and subsequent quotations from the Review): 

4.28. Therefore, for moving traffic, the signs used at the site of the bus gate restriction may comply with the TSRGD and TSM Chapter 3, but if, say, the driver has no forewarning, and is faced with having to do a U-turn to avoid the restriction, can the authority be said to have complied with Regulation 18?

4.29. ... It is implicit that the Regulation 18 duty to bring to the attention of road users the effect of the various traffic restrictions and instructions requires the traffic authority to utilise such TRSDGD signs as are necessary.

4.30. Schedule 12 of TSRGD deals with directional signs and comprises 29 Parts set out in 100 pages. They include approved wording for, for example, “alternative route” and “avoiding”...

4.31. Taking in the scope of TSRGD and the TSM, it is clear that although the signs immediately at the John Dobson Street bus gate complied with TSRGD, NCC’s duty to bring the restriction to the attention of the road user is not limited to the signs placed at the restriction, and that the bus lane authority has not necessarily fulfilled its duty under Regulation 18.

Noting that John Dobson Street was then classified as B1309, she wrote:

5.4. The system of roads classification is intended to direct motorists towards the most suitable routes for reaching their destination. It does this by identifying roads that are best suited for traffic.

5.5. The statutory Guidance on Road Classification and the Primary Route Network, published by the Department for Transport (DfT) on 13 March 2012, describes road classification at Paragraph 1.13 as:

• A roads – major roads intended to provide large-scale transport links within or between areas.

• B roads – roads intended to connect different areas, and to feed traffic between A roads and smaller roads on the network.

5.6. A bus gate restricting through traffic, therefore, is a contradiction of what is a ‘B road’.

5.7. The B1309 has not, so far as I am aware, been declassified. The signing, and retention of the classification, means that NCC are giving conflicting messages to road users that interferes with their Regulation 18 duty. By keeping the road as a B road (despite it being simple to change its status) they are saying in effect, "we hereby inform you that this road is suitable for general traffic to access particular areas and to connect with other roads".

The Chief Adjudicator found fault with the design of the scheme as a whole:

5.15. The [Notice of Rejection of Representations] also points to problems with the scheme as a whole. There must be serious doubts about the enforceability of a restriction where so many drivers reach the point of no return and either have to turn into a cul-de-sac and struggle with a U-Turn, or have to make a U-turn at the restriction itself. Given that there are frequent buses travelling in both directions that latter manoeuvre could be described as ill-advised. The situation is similar to the driver reaching the speed limit sign at the beginning of the limit, which gave rise to Walker J, in Coombe v DPP, finding that the speed limit was unenforceable.

After the Review Decision was published, Newcastle grumbled but then made changes to the priorities so that northbound traffic was directed into the cul-de-sac and buses wishing to go straight ahead into the bus gate had to signal and give way to vehicles returning from the cul-de-sac. The change was implicitly lauded by DfT: they included this photograph of the updated bus gate in Local Transport Note 1/24: Bus user priority.

Other Legal Issues

Other legal issues which may arise with PCNs are:

• the Presumption of Regularity;

• failure to use the correct traffic sign;

• whether PCNs can lawfully be issued when the traffic sign was specially authorised by DfT;

• the extent to which minor deviations from the specification of a traffic sign can be disregarded

Written 29th October 2025; last updated 19th February 2026