of PCN appeals against Bedford Borough Council are won

Name: Penalty charge appeal outcomes for Bedford Borough Council, 2013/14 to 2024/25
Creator: Traffic Penalty Tribunal

The Traffic Penalty Tribunal recorded 846 outcomes for appeals against Bedford Borough Council from 2013/14 to 2024/25, and 415 of them ended with the driver paying nothing. That is 5.3 points below the 54.4% tribunal average.

846appeals with an outcome

415won — nothing to pay

418refused

Over the same period Bedford Borough Council told the tribunal it issued 475,738 penalty charge notices. Only 846 of them ever reached an adjudicator, roughly one in 562. Almost everyone pays, which is worth knowing before you assume a ticket must be fair because so few people fight it.

What the tickets are worth. In its return to the government for 2024-25, Bedford Borough Council reported £1.2m of income from parking fines. That is 25% of everything it earned from parking, so most of its parking money comes from people paying to park rather than from penalties. Any surplus is not profit in the ordinary sense: on-street surpluses have to be spent on transport under section 55 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984.

What the appeals were about

Bedford Borough Council enforces more than one kind of penalty, and drivers do not fare the same on each.

Penalty type	Outcomes	Not contested	Won
Parking	599	155	51.6%
Bus lane	247	62	42.9%

217 of those 415 wins were uncontested. In 52.3% of the appeals Bedford Borough Council lost, it put up no defence at the tribunal at all. Roughly a third to a half of its losses never got argued, so a properly written appeal has a real chance of being conceded before anyone reads the evidence. Those tickets were not close calls. The authority had already given up on them, and the appeal was the only thing standing between the driver and a cancelled charge.

Is it getting easier or harder?

In 2013/14 to 2015/16, drivers won 63.2% of appeals against Bedford Borough Council, from 361 outcomes. In 2022/23 to 2024/25 it was 27.8%, from 126. Drivers are doing worse now than they were, by 35.4 points, so do not lean on the older figures.

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Year by year

Year	Allowed	Not contested	Refused	Won
2013/14	8	34	34	55%
2014/15	46	93	55	72%
2015/16	26	21	44	52%
2016/17	20	12	36	46%
2017/18	17	9	66	28%
2018/19	15	13	29	48%
2019/20	16	11	36	41%
2020/21	12	5	18	47%
2021/22	14	8	13	59%
2022/23	14	3	24	40%
2023/24	6	2	38	17%
2024/25	4	6	25	27%
All years	198	217	418	49.1%

Busiest year: 2014/15, with 194 appeals decided. A further 13 appeals were closed by consent order across the period, which the tribunal counts separately because it can mean the driver agreeing to pay the original charge.

What this does and does not tell you

These are appeals that reached an independent adjudicator, which is the last stage. They leave out every ticket cancelled earlier, when you first challenge it or make formal representations, and that is where most successful challenges actually end. So your real chance of getting a ticket cancelled somewhere in the process is higher than 49.1%, not lower. Among the 203 authorities in England outside London and in Wales with enough appeals to compare, Bedford Borough Council ranks 135th for how often drivers win.

Two details worth knowing before you read too much into the number. The refused column includes appeals made after the deadline and appeals the driver withdrew, so it is not purely a record of arguments that lost on the evidence. And a small number of appeals each year finish with no outcome recorded against any of these categories, so the totals here are of appeals that reached a recorded outcome rather than of every appeal lodged.

Before you write

Find your contravention code. Every PCN carries a two digit code that says exactly what they claim you did, and what they have to prove. Look yours up.
Check the deadline. Discounts and rights both expire. Work out your dates.
Know how appeals work outside London. The Traffic Penalty Tribunal route, step by step.
Do not just ignore it. What actually happens if you do.

How similar authorities compare

Authority	Appeals won
Gedling Borough Council	49.3% of 134
Elmbridge Borough Council	49.2% of 433
St Helens Council	49.1% of 116
Bedford Borough Council (this page)	49.1% of 846
Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council	48.8% of 320
Devon County Council	48.7% of 1,638
Northumberland County Council	48.6% of 603

Every authority we hold figures for, with sources →

Source: Traffic Penalty Tribunal, appeals data by authority, covering 2013/14 to 2024/25. The tribunal decides appeals for England outside London and for Wales, across parking, bus lane, moving traffic, clean air zone, river crossing and littering penalties. Every type Bedford Borough Council enforces is counted above. A tribunal outcome depends on the evidence in that particular case, so nothing here predicts yours.