RUC 56-day deemed acceptance (authority silence auto-cancels)
For Dart Charge and Mersey Gateway (Merseyflow) penalty charge notices, if you send a written challenge (a 'representation') and the charging authority does not SERVE its decision on you within 56 days of your challenge reaching them, the law treats them as having ACCEPTED your challenge. The penalty must then be cancelled and any money paid refunded automatically. This is an outright auto-win driven purely by the authority missing its own deadline, not by the merits of the case. Because these free-flow crossings are run by high-volume outsourced operators, the 56-day slip is common.
Legal basis
The Road User Charging Schemes (Penalty Charges, Adjudication and Enforcement) (England) Regulations 2013 (S.I. 2013/1783), regulation 8(10): where a charging authority fails to serve notice of its decision within the 56 days allowed by regulation 8(9), "(a) it is deemed to have accepted the representations made under paragraph (1) and to have served notice to that effect under regulation 9(1); and (b) it must as soon as reasonably practicable refund any sum paid in respect of the penalty charge notice and (if applicable) the road user charge." The 56 days run from the date the representations were served on the authority.
How to identify this in your case
Work out the date your written challenge reached the charging authority — an acknowledgement email or a portal receipt is the best evidence of it, because the 56 days run from when they received it, not from when you sent it. Then ask whether a decision was SERVED on you inside those 56 days. Hearing nothing at all is the clearest case. A notice of rejection that arrives afterwards still counts as late, and the date printed inside it does not settle the question — keep the envelope. If they did not serve a decision in time, the authority is treated as having accepted your challenge and must cancel the penalty and refund anything you paid.
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