HomeAppeal success ratesElmbridge Borough Council

49.2%

of PCN appeals against Elmbridge Borough Council are won

The Traffic Penalty Tribunal recorded 433 outcomes for appeals against Elmbridge Borough Council from 2013/14 to 2024/25, and 213 of them ended with the driver paying nothing. That is 5.2 points below the 54.4% tribunal average.

433appeals with an outcome
213won — nothing to pay
217refused

Over the same period Elmbridge Borough Council told the tribunal it issued 242,151 penalty charge notices. Only 433 of them ever reached an adjudicator, roughly one in 559. Almost everyone pays, which is worth knowing before you assume a ticket must be fair because so few people fight it.

75 of those 213 wins were uncontested. In 35.2% of the appeals Elmbridge 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 Elmbridge 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 26 17 34 56%
2014/15 18 11 18 62%
2015/16 17 7 23 51%
2016/17 16 8 55 30%
2017/18 21 2 33 41%
2018/19 15 4 20 49%
2019/20 10 7 10 63%
2020/21 4 3 4 64%
2021/22 6 10 5 73%
2022/23 4 4 10 40%
2023/24 1 1 3 40%
2024/25 0 1 2 33%
All years13875 21749.2%

Busiest year: 2016/17, with 79 appeals decided. A further 3 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 49.2%, not lower. Among the 203 authorities in England outside London and in Wales with enough appeals to compare, Elmbridge Borough Council ranks 133rd 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
Borough Council of Kings Lynn and West Norfolk 49.6% of 137
East Sussex County Council (Hastings) 49.5% of 107
Gedling Borough Council 49.3% of 134
Elmbridge Borough Council (this page) 49.2% of 433
St Helens Council 49.1% of 116
Bedford Borough Council 49.1% of 846
Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council 48.8% of 320

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.