Parking tickets (PCNs)

How to pay

Pay online
By telephone with a credit or debit card on 0845 1300 555
With cash at our Civic Centre Cashiers Office. Cash payments need to be made before 4pm Monday to Friday.
By cheque or postal order, made payable to London Borough of Hounslow

For cheque and postal order payments, please send to:

Parking Services
Civic Centre
Lampton Road
Hounslow
TW3 4DN

Challenge your parking fine (PCN)

Under the Traffic Management Act 2004, a formal challenge/representation against the issue of the Penalty Charge Notice (PCN) may be made within 28 days of the date the PCN was issued.

To obtain this information, we make enquiries to the DVLA. Even so, a Notice to Owner may be sent to the person appearing to us to be the owner.

If your correspondence is received within 14 days of the issue date of the penalty charge, we will freeze the case at the discounted amount (for one occasion only) until we have considered your comments and have sent you a reply.
If we accept your challenge we will cancel your penalty charge notice and inform you in writing.
If we reject your challenge we will inform you in writing and re-offer a 14 day period in which a discounted payment would be accepted as full and final payment to close the case.

We will only offer the discounted amount on one occasion once we reject your penalty charge notice. Further correspondence/challenges will not lead to an extension of the discount amount. Your options for further appealing the penalty charge notice will be outlined in the rejection letter.
If your correspondence is received after the expiry of the 14 day discount period, we will freeze the case at the full amount until we have considered your comments and have sent you a reply.
If we accept your challenge, we will cancel your penalty charge notice and inform you in writing.
If we do not cancel the penalty charge and reject your challenge, we will allow you 14 days, from the date of our letter, to pay at the full amount before we progress the case to the first formal stage (Notice to Owner). Your options to further appeal the penalty charge notice will be outlined in the letter.
If you do not make payment or write to challenge your penalty charge notice, we will send a Notice to Owner to the person who appears to be the registered keeper of the vehicle.

Please note: Legally we have to wait until 28 days have elapsed, from the date the PCN (penalty charge notice) was issued, before we are able to send the Notice to Owner document out. For more information on the Notice to Owner please see the ‘Unpaid Penalties’ section below.

Submit a Challenge

There are several ways that you can submit a challenge:

Online:
Challenge a parking fine (PCN) online
E-mail: parking@hounslow.gov.uk
Fax: via 020 8583 4889
Letter: use the address on the back of the penalty charge notice

Please ensure you include the following information:

Penalty charge notice number which starts with HW
Vehicle registration number
Your name and address
Any details you wish to be considered including evidence

Please note: If you wish to hold the case at the discount amount., your challenge must be received within 14 days, beginning with the date of issue.

You may submit a challenge via letter by dropping it into the Civic Centre at the reception desk.

Please ensure your challenge includes a clear name and address for us to reply to, otherwise we will not be able to send you a response. This means you will not be able to pay the discounted amount if you have submitted your challenge within the 14 day discount period.

Please quote the penalty charge notice number and vehicle registration number in all your communications relating to penalty charge notices.

The information you provide will be bound by the council's privacy policies and all other aspects of this website's.

Please note that you cannot challenge a penalty charge notice via phone or in person. All challenges must be in writing.

Penalty rates

Less serious offences are fined £60 and more serious offences fined £100. A 50% reduction for payment within 14 days applies.

The higher rate £100 fines includes:

parking at bus stops
on pedestrian crossings
in safety zones outside schools

Less serious offences that attract a lower fine of £60 include:

overstaying in a pay and display bay
not parking within the parking bay markings
re-parking in a short-stay bay within one hour of leaving

Penalty charge notices issued within the Twickenham Event Day zone are higher with less serious parking offences being fined £80 and more serious offences fined £120.

Unpaid Penalties/Notice to Owner

If 28 days, from the date the penalty charge notice is issued, have passed and you have not paid the penalty charge notice or made a ‘challenge’ against it, the statutory document called the Notice to Owner will be sent to the person appearing to the council to be the owner.

To obtain this information, we make enquiries to the DVLA. A Notice to Owner may be sent to the person appearing to the Council to be the owner.

The Notice to Owner is a pink and green document and will ask you to either pay at the full charge or make a Representation. Your payment or Representation must be made within 28 days of the date the Notice to Owner is served.

If you wish to pay, the payment methods are listed above in the payment section. This information can also be found in the Notice to Owner document.

Under the Traffic Management Act 2004, the issue of the penalty charge may only be made after we send the 'Notice to Owner' document to the person appearing to the council to be the owner, 28 days after the date the penalty charge notice was issued.

If you wish to make a Representation, all of the instructions you need in order to complete this are shown on the document. You will need to select your grounds by ticking one of the boxes on the front, or whichever is nearest to your reasons.

Enter whatever mitigation you wish to be considered on the reverse side of the representations page. Sign and date the document.

Please note: Only the addressee may make a representation (or given an explanation or comments).

You should be aware that in law, the owner of the vehicle is to be held responsible for a penalty charge notice regardless of who was driving it at the time it was issued.

For vehicles hired/leased under a relevant hire agreement, the responsible party is the person who hired the vehicle.

The hire/lease company will be sent the Notice to Owner and they will either pay the charge and bill you, or nominate you as the hirer/lessee. The council will then send a fresh Notice to Owner to the hirer/lessee.

If you fail to respond to the Notice to Owner addressed to you within 28 days of the Notice being served, then the next stage of Charge Certificate will increase the full amount by 50%. It is therefore in your own interest not to ignore the Notice to Owner but to reply appropriately and in time.

Charge certificate

If you have received a green form called a Charge Certificate, it is too late to make Representation and the right to appeal has been lost.

The options are to pay the charge as stated, in full, or, if one of the three grounds below applies, to wait until the case is registered as a debt at Northampton County Court Parking Enforcement Centre and make a statutory declaration.

The three grounds are:

You did not receive the Notice to Owner (sent through the post at least 28 days after the penalty charge notice was issued).
You made a Representation to the Council, before the end of the period of 28 days, but did not receive a Notice of Rejection.
You made an appeal to the Parking/Traffic Adjudicator against the Local Authority's decision to reject your Representation, within 28 days of receiving their decision, but did not receive a reply.

Please Note: Filing a false declaration knowingly and wilfully is a criminal offence under Section 5 of the Perjury Act 1911 and you may be imprisoned for up to 2 years, fined or both.