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'), it reaches the charging authority in time, and the 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. The authority may disregard a challenge it receives after the end of the 28 days that start on the day the penalty charge notice was served, so allow for the post.
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. Regulation 8(2) permits the authority to disregard representations it receives after the end of the period of 28 days beginning with the date on which the penalty charge notice was served.
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. Check it reached them in time: the authority may disregard a challenge it receives after the end of the 28 days that start on the day the penalty charge notice was served. 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 your challenge reached them in time and they did not serve a decision within the 56 days, the authority is treated as having accepted your challenge and must cancel the penalty and refund anything you paid.
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