Request ID: FOI-3170-2223 Date published: 14 March 2023
You asked
I am requesting figures resulting from erroneous charges being applied and disputes being raised from the mis reading of index plates by RUC ULEZ ANPR cameras.
Whereupon the plate was misread by the ANPR camera and charges wrongly applied to a different vehicle.
I would ideally like with the figures from the introduction of the ULEZ until now.
If this exceeds the financial or time constraints of a FOI request, a figure from the start of the ULEZ: 8 April 2019 until 8 April 2020 will suffice.
We answered
TfL Ref: FOI-3170-2223
Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 25th February 2023 asking for information about ULEZ charges.
Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy.
Specifically you asked:
“I am requesting figures resulting from erroneous charges being applied and disputes being raised from the mis reading of index plates by RUC ULEZ ANPR cameras.
Whereupon the plate was misread by the ANPR camera and charges wrongly applied to a different vehicle.
I would ideally like with the figures from the introduction of the ULEZ until now.
If this exceeds the financial or time constraints of a FOI request, a figure from the start of the ULEZ: 8 April 2019 until 8 April 2020 will suffice.”
When we apply Auto Pay charges to an account the account holder has 90 days to dispute the charge. One of the grounds on which an account holder can dispute a charge is that the registration of the vehicle being driven in the zone does not match the registration listed on the Auto Pay account on which the charge has been applied. i.e. the registration of the vehicle has been misread by the camera.
While we record the dispute reason, Auto Pay accounts collect charges for ULEZ, Congestion Charging and the Low Emission Zone, and we cannot automatically report for which scheme the disputed charge has been applied. Between 8 April 2019 and 8 April 2020 alone we received 281 charge disputes on these grounds. These are dispute volumes and do not necessarily indicate the charge was incorrectly applied. In order to identify that, and establish how many of the disputes specifically related to ULEZ, we would have to manually check every dispute on an individual basis. This is not possible within the costs limit for sourcing information to respond to FOI cases, as set out under section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act. Under section 12, TfL is not obliged to provide information if it would cost more than £450 to determine if the requested information is held, and to then locate, retrieve or extract that information from elsewhere. This is calculated at a rate of £25 per hour, equivalent to 18 hours work. To manually review 281 records we estimate it would take over 30 hours.
More generally, note that the Auto Pay system works well and the overall volume of disputes received is very low. To put the above mentioned 281 disputes into context, we currently process over 48,000 Auto Pay payments a day.
Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal as well as information on copyright and what to do if you would like to re-use any of the information we have disclosed.
Yours sincerely,
David Wells FOI Case Officer FOI Case Management Team General Counsel Transport for London
