HomeAppeal success ratesChesterfield Borough Council

67%

of PCN appeals against Chesterfield Borough Council are won

The Traffic Penalty Tribunal recorded 106 outcomes for appeals against Chesterfield Borough Council from 2013/14 to 2024/25, and 71 of them ended with the driver paying nothing. That is 12.6 points better than the 54.4% tribunal average.

106appeals with an outcome
71won, nothing to pay
34refused

Over the same period Chesterfield Borough Council told the tribunal it issued 42,362 penalty charge notices. Only 106 of them ever reached an adjudicator, roughly one in 400. Almost everyone pays, which is worth knowing before you assume a ticket must be fair because so few people fight it.

32 of those 71 wins were uncontested. In 45.1% of the appeals Chesterfield 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.

Appealing a Chesterfield Borough Council ticket?

Build a properly worded appeal letter in a couple of minutes. Free, no account, and nothing you type leaves your browser.

Build my appeal letter

Year by year

YearAllowedNot contestedRefusedWon
2013/14 2 8 2 83%
2014/15 3 3 2 75%
2015/16 9 6 7 65%
2016/17 4 5 2 82%
2017/18 6 1 2 78%
2018/19 6 1 2 78%
2019/20 3 2 3 63%
2020/21 0 2 2 50%
2021/22 5 2 2 78%
2022/23 1 1 2 50%
2023/24 0 1 4 20%
2024/25 0 0 4 0%
All years3932 3467%

Busiest year: 2015/16, with 23 appeals decided. A further 1 appeal was 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 67%, not lower. Among the 203 authorities in England outside London and in Wales with enough appeals to compare, Chesterfield Borough Council ranks 23rd 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

How similar authorities compare

Authority Appeals won
Trafford Borough Council 68.2% of 1,012
City and County of Swansea Council 67.6% of 1,927
Southend-on-Sea Borough Council 67.1% of 1,283
Chesterfield Borough Council (this page) 67% of 106
Norwich City Council 66.8% of 781
Warwickshire County Council 66.6% of 701
Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council 66% of 1,266

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. Only parking penalties appear in its record. A tribunal outcome depends on the evidence in that particular case, so nothing here predicts yours.