Details of all Penalty charge notices issued relating to the Ulez zone since its inception
Request ID: FOI-2800-2223 Date published: 20 February 2023
You asked
Can you please confirm the following.
1. The number of PCN's issued by TFL for non-payment of ULEZ charges, or other PCN's related to the ULEZ rules in 2019 2. The number of PCN's issued by TFL for non-payment of ULEZ charges, or other PCN's related to the ULEZ rules in 2020 3. The number of PCN's issued by TFL for non-payment of ULEZ charges, or other PCN's related to the ULEZ rules in 2021 4. The number of PCN's issued by TFL for non-payment of ULEZ charges, or other PCN's related to the ULEZ rules in 2022
For each of the above figures can you please confirm the following:
a) How many PCN's were challenged succesfully, and the PCN's cancelled
d) How many of the PCN's were paid within the discount period, at the discounted amount due.
e) How many of the PCN's were paid outside of the discount period, but within 28 days of issue, at the full amount of the PCN.
f) How many of the PCN's not paid within 28 days, escalted to the charge certificate stage,
g) Of those for which a charge certificate was issued, how many were paid by the customer, before reaching the order for recovery stage.
h) The number of PCNs for which an order of recovery was issued.
i) The number of PCNs that were settled at the order of recovery stage, before Enforcement Agents were instructed.
j) The total number of PCN's passed to enforcement agents for each of the above periods.
In respect of enforcement agents, the three acting on your behalf according to your website are:
- Bristow & Sutor
- CDER Group (JBW Group)
- Marston Group
Please add any figures relating to other Enforcement Agents you have instructed into the information requested below.
For each of the years 2019-2022; Can you confirm the number of PCN's relating to ULEZ, passed to each of the above enforcement agents.
Can you please clarify the inital charge paid to each enforcement agent when they are instructed to enforce the warrant of control on your behalf.
For each of the Enforcement Agents, can you confirm how many of the PCNs were succesfully enforced.
Of those sucessfully enforced, can you confirm the amount of compliance charges, enforcement charges, and sale charges the bailiffs added to the debt, and the average 'sale' charge added.
Finally, can you confirm which checks are made at each stage of the process to assess a customers vulnerability. The number of PCN's that have been cancelled by TFL during these periods due to a clients vulnerability & the number of PCN's that were returned by enforcement bailiffs due to clients vulnerability.
We answered
Our Ref: FOI-2800-2223
Thank you for your request received on 1 February 2023 asking for information about Ultra-low Emission Zone (ULEZ) penalty charge notices (PCNs).
Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and our information access policy. I can confirm we do hold the information you require.
Unfortunately, to provide the information you have requested would exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ of £450 set by the FOI (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.
We are unable to run a report on whether a PCN was cancelled due to a customer’s vulnerability. In addition, we are also unable to extract any data around vulnerability for either Capita or bailiff processing. In order to provide information on PCNs cancelled for this reason we would need to manually review each cancelled case manually. We cancel around 12k ULEZ PCNs each month so this question alone would take an excessive amount of time, and would easily exceed the cost limit.
To help bring the cost of responding to your requests within the £450 limit, you may wish to consider refining your requests to concentrate on matters which are important to you. Please note that we have previously responded to a number of FOI requests on ULEZ PCNs and regularly publish ULEZ data on the TfL website. You may wish to look at our responses and the information already available before submitting a new request:
If you want to refine your request or make a Freedom of Information Act request in future, please bear in mind that the Freedom of Information Act allows you to request recorded information held by us. You should identify the information that you want as clearly and concisely as you can, specifying the types of document that you are looking for.
Although your request can take the form of a question, rather than a request for specific documents, we do not have to answer your question if it would require the creation of new information or the provision of a judgement, explanation, advice or opinion that was not already recorded at the time of your request.
Please note that we will not be taking further action until we receive your revised request.
In the meantime, if you have any queries or would like to discuss your request, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.
Yours sincerely
Gemma Jacob Senior FOI Case Officer FOI Case Management Team General Counsel Transport for London
