CROYDON COMMENTARY: A year ago, the council shrugged off complaints from thousands of motorists who received £195 ‘final notice’ Penalty Charge Notices without ever receiving the initial notification. They said it was just a ‘computer glitch’. As PETER GILLMAN has discovered, the council’s ‘glitch’ is still happening…

‘Dysfunctional’: a technical glitch with the issue of PCNs in 2023 and 2024 cost cash-strapped Croydon tens of thousands. And it appears it is still happening

The letter looked like bad news even before I opened it. It had a “Croydon Council” address on the back of the envelope, 8 Mint Walk, Croydon. I moved from Croydon 12 years ago and now live a short distance across the borough boundary in Bromley.

So what did Croydon want with me?

When I opened the letter, it confirmed my worse fears. It was a “Charge Certificate”, undated, which made a double allegation against me. First was, “Failure to comply with a prohibition on certain types of vehicles.” Said failure to comply was not specified further, only that was supposed to have taken place at the junction of Albert Road and Harrington Road in South Norwood.

I could not remember any such contravention, but presumed that I must have strayed down the wrong street in the maze-like Low Traffic Neighbourhood between Portland Road and South Norwood Country Park.

That, however, was not the end of my non-compliance. The second allegation was that I had failed to respond to “A Notice to Owner/PCN” sent to me on December 2, a Penalty Charge Notice, which instructed me to pay the charge within 28 days, or to make representations as to why I did not have to do so.

The total I owed had risen from an original £65 to £195, including £65 as a “charge certificate surcharge”.

I assumed that this was all my fault. That somewhere inside the cluttered Gillman front hall, the letter had gone astray.

Warning sign: the council’s LTNs are a bit of a money spinner – when the council can get its paperwork right

Then reality reasserted itself. Who was more likely to have cocked this up? Me? Or Croydon Council?

I was increasingly drawn to the latter explanation, and wondered how I could challenge this Charge Certificate. I now discovered that the letter had no address or contact information for me to contact Croydon Council. It did say that to make an inquiry about it, I should “please go online at http://www.croydon.gov.uk/parking fines”.

I did as instructed, only to spend a frustrating 20 minutes trying to find a link that would permit me to make my inquiry. I gave up the quest.

Instead, I resorted to the desperate measure of writing a snail-mail letter to the generic council address shown on the back of the envelope. In my letter, I said that if I had transgressed as the council claimed, I would pay whatever I owed, but not the additional penalties it wanted to enforce.

Then I discovered that all this had happened before.

Inside Croydon had news reports from a year ago of precisely the same kind of maladminstration. On January 27 last year, iC reported how thousands of motorists had been served with notices of fines without having received the initial PCN, just as had happened with me.

Croydon Council had to repay more than £500,000 to the motorists who had felt compelled to pay up. The only explanation offered by the council at the time was a possible “computer glitch”.

Then came a near-miracle. I received a letter from the council headed “Letter of Cancellation”. Dated January 28 2025, the council told me that they had once again suffered “technical problems” over issuing statutory notices about PCNs. The council apologised, the technical problems had been resolved – and my PCN was cancelled.

Mingled with my sense of relief was surprise that the council had coughed so readily. It all seemed uncannily reminiscent of the episode a year before.

Candid cameras: Croydon’s ANPR equipment is waiting to ambush the unwary driver

I asked Croydon’s press office if it could tell me more about the technical problems and whether these were the same as a year ago. It replied that the council was investigating “how this happened” and that therefore they were “unable to provide further details at this stage”.

I felt like responding that since Croydon said that they had solved the technical problems, then they really ought to know how they happened. But by then I was losing the will to live.

Meanwhile I had been to examine the scene of the “crime”, namely the junction of Harrington and Albert roads. The entrance to Albert Road bore two signs showing that entry was prohibited unless you were driving a bus or taxi or had a permit. The signs were set a short distance back and I guessed that I could have turned into Albert Road from the left and was already passing the signs by the time I spotted them.

I stopped and reversed, but too late to avoid a fine.

It’s an expensive business, and about to get even more expensive. Inside Croydon reported yesterday that such fines will be increasing to £160, with a 50% discount for prompt payment – adding that Croydon’s Mayor Perry had wanted them increased even more, to £180.

These charges do seem excessive for a momentary mistake as opposed to a deliberate transgression. But I am not in the class of aggrieved motorists who feel that such traffic controls are a fundamental attack on their liberties, and I support Low Traffic Neighbourhoods in principle, too.

And if I did make a mistake late last year, I can count myself lucky that Croydon Council’s incompetence spared me from the result. I was also lucky that I did not have to embark on the lengthy process required to reverse the £65 surcharge, as other drivers had attempted to do the year before.

I came away with one further helpful piece of information, namely how to challenge a PCN in future.

Croydon Council’s press office provided me with two links: https://ss3.azurewebsites.net/Welcome or you can email PCN@croydon.gov.uk.

I am happy to make these known more widely, to assist Croydon’s drivers should all this happen again. After all, they said they had fixed it all last year, didn’t they?

Read more: Mayor Perry forced to issue apology for PCNs ‘software error’
Read more: Kerrr-ching! Unsuspecting drivers hit with no-notice £190 fines
Read more: Council’s PCN fiasco: ex-official is still ‘signing’ official letters
Read more: Croydon’s PCN fiasco: Perry’s council is in another fines mess

• Peter Gillman is a semi-retired journalist, a former member of the Sunday Times Insight team

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