From Monday (10 December 2007) drivers who fail to pay the London Congestion Charge will face a fine of £120, discounted to £60 if paid within 14 days.
Transport for London say the changes will bring the charge into line with the rate of penalties issued by London Boroughs for traffic and parking offences.
At present drivers who fail to pay by midnight either on the day of travel or the following charging day receive a Penalty Charge Notice (PCN) of £100. This is reduced to £50 if payment is made within 14 days.
According to TfL15 per cent of penalties currently result in challenges and around one per cent result in an appeal to the independent adjudicators. Of those appeals heard by adjudicators TfL consistently wins around 85 to 90 per cent, the highest success rate of any civil traffic enforcement regime
Graeme Craig, Director of Congestion Charging, said: “Last year we introduced Pay Next Day, which reduced the number of penalties issued to those who forget to pay by around 15 per cent, and we are currently investigating the feasibility of introducing an automated payment system that could further reduce this number.”
richard holland says
there are so many weaknesses in the current low tech congestion charge currently in place.
It costs too much to administer.
Automatic reminders to registered users to be sent emails and or text messages reminding them to pay.
We need something like Singapore, and automatic rechargeable memory card (like Oyster) which click down one unit each day you enter the zone.
Until you have an automatic reminder system for registered users it should be possible :
for those who can’t be sure if we entered the zone we need to be able to call you up say at 7.00pm on the day and ask if you have a record of us having entered.
The penalties are too harsh and there should be a 7 day window in which to pay. the penalties appear to be nothing more than revenue generating. Fines in Court for No MOT or insurance are often less than the penalty imposed for the congestion charge.
Justifying the raise in the penalty to match parking is wrong as the parking penalty system too is seen as unjust by very much the majority of Londoners.
Please reply in detail.
kind regards,
Richard Holland