of PCN appeals against Swindon Borough Council are won

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

The Traffic Penalty Tribunal recorded 899 outcomes for appeals against Swindon Borough Council from 2013/14 to 2024/25, and 480 of them ended with the driver paying nothing. That is close to the 54.4% tribunal average.

899appeals with an outcome

480won — nothing to pay

404refused

Over the same period Swindon Borough Council told the tribunal it issued 618,659 penalty charge notices. Only 899 of them ever reached an adjudicator, roughly one in 688. 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, Swindon Borough Council reported £864,000 of income from parking fines. That is 18% 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

Swindon 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	503	155	65.2%
Bus lane	396	34	38.4%

189 of those 480 wins were uncontested. In 39.4% of the appeals Swindon 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 63.5% of appeals against Swindon Borough Council, from 323 outcomes. In 2022/23 to 2024/25 it was 34.6%, from 107. Drivers are doing worse now than they were, by 28.9 points, so do not lean on the older figures.

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Year by year

Year	Allowed	Not contested	Refused	Won
2013/14	18	39	39	58%
2014/15	38	46	25	77%
2015/16	23	41	52	55%
2016/17	36	13	55	47%
2017/18	35	15	52	49%
2018/19	23	12	39	42%
2019/20	50	15	38	63%
2020/21	24	1	16	60%
2021/22	12	2	19	42%
2022/23	22	3	14	64%
2023/24	4	0	30	12%
2024/25	6	2	25	24%
All years	291	189	404	53.4%

Busiest year: 2015/16, with 116 appeals decided. A further 15 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 53.4%, not lower. Among the 203 authorities in England outside London and in Wales with enough appeals to compare, Swindon Borough Council ranks 111th 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
Worcester City Council	53.6% of 265
Caerphilly County Council	53.5% of 142
Torbay Council	53.4% of 1,542
Swindon Borough Council (this page)	53.4% of 899
Swale Borough Council	53.1% of 335
Medway Council	53% of 1,490
Wokingham Borough Council	53% of 508

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 Swindon Borough Council enforces is counted above. A tribunal outcome depends on the evidence in that particular case, so nothing here predicts yours.