Camera misread a foreign or similar-looking plate

Automatic number-plate recognition cameras sometimes misread foreign-style plates as UK ones, or vice versa. This can mean a penalty charge notice ends up sent to the wrong vehicle keeper entirely. If you are a foreign visitor, you may also have been sent a notice to an address you never received it at.

Legal basis

Outside Greater London: Road User Charging Schemes (Penalty Charges, Adjudication and Enforcement) (England) Regulations 2013 (S.I. 2013/1783) regulation 8(3)(e) — representations that "no road user charge or penalty charge is payable under the charging scheme" — with regulation 8(2) allowing 28 days from service. In Greater London: Road User Charging (Enforcement and Adjudication) (London) Regulations 2001 (S.I. 2001/2313) regulation 13(3)(c), that "no penalty charge is payable under the charging scheme". Transport Act 2000 Part III and Greater London Authority Act 1999 Schedule 23 respectively; the relevant local CAZ or LEZ Charging Order.

How to identify this in your case

Recipient's vehicle is UK plate but ANPR shows EU/EEA-style plate; or recipient is foreign keeper without UK address.

Sample appeal wording

Before you send this

Deadline. A late submission can be turned down without your argument being read. Check your notice for the deadline and how it is counted.
Paying may end it. Paying can count as accepting the notice and can close a challenge already under way. Part-paying or acknowledging an old debt can also revive a time limit that had expired.
The amount can change. Check what happens to the sum if you challenge — it may be held, re-offered lower, or keep rising, and fees or enforcement can continue meanwhile.
Use the official route. Use the method, recipient and form your notice specifies, with any reference, evidence and signature it asks for. Sent elsewhere, it may not count.
Only say what is true. Do not copy any statement of fact unless it is true for you, and check the legal point still applies. Delete what does not fit. It may be treated as your statement.
Careful what you volunteer. Avoid unnecessary admissions — naming the driver or accepting responsibility can remove arguments. But answer anything you are legally required to answer, and do include the evidence your ground needs.
Keep the record. Keep what you sent, the attachments, any receipt, and the reply. Note the next deadline.

Sample wording to adapt and send yourself — it may not fit your notice or the stage you are at. Replace the bracketed prompts with your own details; leave any case citation as it is.

To: [Council/TfL] CAZ/ULEZ Team Re: PCN [PCN_NUMBER] The ANPR record [shows a foreign-registered vehicle but is being enforced against my UK plate / shows my foreign-registered vehicle but I never received the original notice]. Cross-border enforcement post-Brexit has limited mutual recognition under the EU CBE Directive. Evidence: [photos / international postal records]. Please cancel. Yours faithfully, [Keeper Name]

Beat It writes this argument automatically

Scan your PCN — our AI checks if this ground applies to your specific ticket, drafts a properly-cited appeal letter, and sends it for you where the council takes email — guiding you through their own online form where they use one, so you press submit. The win fee is only charged if you win.

Camera misread a foreign or similar-looking plate

Legal basis

How to identify this in your case

Sample appeal wording

Beat It writes this argument automatically

Sources

Related appeal grounds

Next steps