HomeAppeal success ratesWokingham Borough Council

53%

of PCN appeals against Wokingham Borough Council are won

The Traffic Penalty Tribunal recorded 508 outcomes for appeals against Wokingham Borough Council from 2017/18 to 2024/25, and 269 of them ended with the driver paying nothing. That is close to the 54.4% tribunal average.

508appeals with an outcome
269won — nothing to pay
237refused

What the appeals were about

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

Penalty typeOutcomesNot contestedWon
Parking 469 59 54.6%
Moving traffic 39 10 33.3%

69 of those 269 wins were uncontested. In 25.7% of the appeals Wokingham Borough Council lost, it put up no defence at the tribunal at all. That is a small share, so expect Wokingham Borough Council to defend most cases and put your argument in front of an adjudicator rather than fold early. 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 2017/18 to 2019/20, drivers won 58.5% of appeals against Wokingham Borough Council, from 135 outcomes. In 2022/23 to 2024/25 it was 40.6%, from 229. Drivers are doing worse now than they were, by 17.9 points, so do not lean on the older figures.

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Year by year

YearAllowedNot contestedRefusedWon
2017/18 5 1 7 46%
2018/19 24 9 36 47%
2019/20 33 7 12 77%
2020/21 22 6 16 64%
2021/22 50 19 31 69%
2022/23 24 2 27 49%
2023/24 25 9 44 43%
2024/25 17 16 64 34%
All years20069 23753%

Busiest year: 2021/22, with 100 appeals decided. A further 2 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%, not lower. Among the 204 authorities in England outside London and in Wales with enough appeals to compare, Wokingham Borough Council ranks 115th 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
Swindon Borough Council 53.4% of 899
Swale Borough Council 53.1% of 335
Medway Council 53% of 1,490
Wokingham Borough Council (this page) 53% of 508
Surrey County Council 52.8% of 487
Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council 52.3% of 682
Southampton City Council 52.3% of 972

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