HomeAppeal success ratesLincolnshire County Council

47.2%

of PCN appeals against Lincolnshire County Council are won

The Traffic Penalty Tribunal recorded 941 outcomes for appeals against Lincolnshire County Council from 2013/14 to 2024/25, and 444 of them ended with the driver paying nothing. That is 7.2 points below the 54.4% tribunal average.

941appeals with an outcome
444won — nothing to pay
481refused

Over the same period Lincolnshire County Council told the tribunal it issued 396,081 penalty charge notices. Only 941 of them ever reached an adjudicator, roughly one in 421. Almost everyone pays, which is worth knowing before you assume a ticket must be fair because so few people fight it.

211 of those 444 wins were uncontested. In 47.5% of the appeals Lincolnshire County 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 51.5% of appeals against Lincolnshire County Council, from 441 outcomes. In 2022/23 to 2024/25 it was 38.3%, from 141. Drivers are doing worse now than they were, by 13.2 points, so do not lean on the older figures.

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Year by year

YearAllowedNot contestedRefusedWon
2013/14 40 51 77 54%
2014/15 41 30 64 53%
2015/16 29 36 73 47%
2016/17 27 19 44 51%
2017/18 22 15 33 52%
2018/19 14 7 38 34%
2019/20 14 8 30 41%
2020/21 9 4 22 36%
2021/22 14 10 19 52%
2022/23 7 13 14 56%
2023/24 9 8 34 32%
2024/25 7 10 33 33%
All years233211 48147.2%

Busiest year: 2013/14, with 168 appeals decided. A further 16 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 47.2%, not lower. Among the 203 authorities in England outside London and in Wales with enough appeals to compare, Lincolnshire County Council ranks 149th 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
Newport City Council 47.7% of 350
Maidstone Borough Council 47.4% of 572
Herefordshire County Council 47.2% of 218
Lincolnshire County Council (this page) 47.2% of 941
Vale of Glamorgan Council 47.1% of 410
Three Rivers District Council 47.1% of 102
South Tyneside Council 47% of 330

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.