Home / Advice / Silvertown/Blackwall Tunnel — inadequate signage / no reasonable notice of the charge

technicalUK · England (London)Difficulty: moderate

Silvertown/Blackwall Tunnel — inadequate signage / no reasonable notice of the charge

As a new (April 2025) charging scheme, adequate signage giving reasonable notice of the charge and how to pay is essential. Absent, obscured or unclear signage on the tunnel approaches is a live ground, especially in the launch period.

Legal basis

General road-user-charging principle that a charging scheme must be adequately signed to give motorists reasonable notice of the charge; procedural-impropriety/contravention ground under the Road User Charging Schemes (Penalty Charges, Adjudication and Enforcement) (England) Regulations 2013 (SI 2013/1783), reg. 4.

How to identify this in your case

Photograph the approach signage; note any missing, obscured or contradictory signs. Particularly relevant since the scheme launched in April 2025.

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.

The charge was not adequately signed so as to give me reasonable notice before entering the tunnel approach [signage absent / obscured / unclear at [LOCATION]]. A motorist could not reasonably have known a charge applied or how to pay. The penalty is therefore unenforceable. Evidence: [photographs of the approach signage].

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Sources

https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publications-and-reports/blackwall-and-silvertown-tunnels-user-charge