You would assume that it would be very easy to find out if you have collected a ticket (penalty charge notice is the legal name - sometime abbreviated to "PCN") and whether it is paid off or not because you will know when you get back to your car and find one on the windshield! But that isn't always the scenario.

In the case of the ghost ticket which is a parking fine scam that I pointed out nearly 8 years ago, the parking ticket is not actually placed on your car or handed to you even though it is printed out. Then about 28 or 30 days down the track you get a document called a Notice to Owner in the post indicating to you that you haven't paid the parking ticket - a ticket which you know absolutely nothing about. So that's just one way you can end up getting a ticket when you don't know about it and the fact is that it's the result of a very well known scam.

In London, in particular, right now there are hundreds and hundreds of CCTV cameras that issue parking tickets Clearly you will not know when one is produced right up until you get it in the post. But even that has its difficulties due to the fact with the uncertainty of our United kingdom mail system you may possibly never receive that PCN and the very first you learn about it is when you receive a document called a Charge Certificate or perhaps worse an order for recovery from Northampton County Court declaring that you have never paid up!

So precisely how can you learn if you've been recently issued with a penalty charge notice ? You could imagine that the very simple answer is you simply call up the Parking Department of the city you are in. That might work in the USA and outside London but in London at this time there are thirty three individual local councils that issue PCNs together with Transport for London. So if you suppose that you may have already been caught on video camera or worse that a parking attendant (in England and Wales they are now called civil enforcement officers) has scammed you with a ghost ticket here is what to do.

Let's assume you know or believe you know roughly exactly where you might have been caught on digital camera or have been seen by a parking attendant.

Telephone the local authority that has jurisdiction within the area exactly where the camera was placed ask for the car parking enforcement department and give your name, automobile registration number and your address and simply inquire for particulars of any parking fines tickets that have already been issued in say the last month.

I say the final month, you could just as effortlessly inquire for the final three months simply because with the advent of CCTV issued car parking enforcement you may hae obtained much more than one parking ticket !!! Moreover you could equally have already been the victim of much more than one ghost ticket. I recall acting for one member from the public ina case infront of the parking adjudicator the the poor chap had received eight ghost tickets.

Hopefully the council officer dealing with your enquiry will provide you with the info but they might say that they can't give out info on the telephone because of data protection legislation. If that is the situation then you merely have to ask them to send the info {to your| registered address which should be the one registered for that automobile .

I ought to add that if you're worried that you've obtained a penalty charge notice whilst driving a automobile belonging to your spouse girlfriend or friend or relative then the local authority won't give you the information simply because the car parking ticket is in law soely the responsibility of the automobile owner instead of the driver. So that's the most straight forward and fastest method to find out details of any parking tickets issued to your vehicle. It's clear that increase use of CCTV for car parking enforcement and dishonest practices in parking enforcement you might nicely have tickets which you knew nothing about.

The difficulty, definitely in London, is that you will find 34 authorities that issue penalty charge notices. Outside of London and in other jurisdictions (e.g. the USA) it's significantly simpler because in a specific jurisdiction there will usually only be one office that issues PCNs. However in some states within the United States of America PCNs will often be given out by both the police and city officials and sometimes even outside contractors acting for the city so in those places you ought to contact both the city and the police.