TfL Ref: FOI-1826-2425
Thank you for your request which we received on 4 September 2024, asking for information about administration of penalty charge notices (PCNs) to hire vehicles.
Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and our information access policy. You specifically asked for:
- The number of traffic violations that were auto assigned and subsequently cancelled due to incorrect information since the process was started. If that date is difficult to ascertain please explain why and provide the details for the widest possible, accurate date range.
We do not hold this information. In such instances we wouldn’t cancel the PCN rather reissue it to the liable party. We wouldn’t record whether the penalty was reissued due to the previously provided hire agreement being amended. Whilst we could manually check every PCN that’s been reissued, as there are thousands every year, this exercise would considerably exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ of £450 set by the Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004.
Under section 12 of the FOI Act, we are not obliged to comply with a request if we estimate that the cost of determining whether we hold the information, locating and retrieving it and extracting it from other information would exceed the appropriate limit. This is calculated at £25 per hour for every hour spent on the activities described.
- The legal basis upon which TfL relies to carry out the auto assignment process.
When we assess representations against a PCN we must give due regard to the grounds of representation in line with the statutory schemes we operate and the underlying regulations.
In respect of a hire agreement, for the purposes of transferring liability for a PCN, the regulations state that the hire period must be for a period of less than six months. Where a hire period is for six months or longer the representation will be rejected and liability for the penalty will remain with the registered keeper. We can also consider longer hire and lease agreements when they are submitted as part of a representation against our Moving Traffic contraventions. In such instances, if the content of the agreement meets the requirements, this does allow us to transfer liability for a penalty based on a keeper update.
In October 2018 we introduced an enhancement to our system in which we use lease / hire information provided by the registered keeper and apply it to any subsequent penalties issued over the period of the lease agreement. This means that any PCNs incurred by the vehicle during the lease / hire period are issued directly to the lessee / hirer rather than to the registered keeper.
As well as ensuring the lessee / hirer receives prompt notification of the penalty this also removes the need for the registered keeper to make repeated representations on the same grounds over the period of the hire/lease. We have found that this works well, and we believe it to be permissible within the regulations.
If the lease / hire agreement ends early, then the recipient of the penalty can make a representation. Once the early return of the vehicle has been demonstrated the penalty would then be re-issued to the registered keeper.
We believe that this use of the lease information provided by the registered keeper is consistent with our GDPR obligations. We consider the benefits to the lessee of receiving prompt notification of a penalty, and avoiding potential administration fees, are likely to outweigh the potential inconvenience of having to make a representation if the lease agreement has ended early.
Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.
Yours sincerely
Eva Hextall
FOI Case Management Team
General Counsel
Transport for London
