Toll paid on time but not matched to your vehicle

Free-flow toll crossings (for example the Mersey Gateway, Tyne Tunnel or Dartford Crossing) read your number plate by camera and link it to your payment. If you paid the correct toll on time but the system failed to match the payment to your vehicle — a wrong digit read on the plate, a timing issue with a top-up, or a database error — the penalty charge notice must be cancelled. Keep your bank or card statement and the toll-account transaction reference as evidence.

Legal basis

Transport Act 2000 ss.163-177; Road User Charging Schemes (Penalty Charges, Adjudication and Enforcement) (England) Regulations 2013 (SI 2013/1783); statutory ground 'the alleged contravention did not occur'

How to identify this in your case

Check your bank or card statement for a toll payment made within the operator's payment deadline for your crossing, and note the transaction reference from your toll account or confirmation.

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.

Payment was made on time. The penalty was issued in error due to a matching / allocation failure on the tolling system. Statutory ground: 'the alleged contravention did not occur'.

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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.

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Toll paid on time but not matched to your vehicle

Legal basis

How to identify this in your case

Sample appeal wording

Beat It writes this argument automatically

Sources

Related appeal grounds

Next steps