What is a "penalty for a driving offence?"
- By
- Aparna Patel
- |
- 1 Aug, 2023
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There are similar terms with significant technical differences. Each of these can be issued relating to parking.
(Caveat: I am not a lawyer, some of this stuff is tricky)
- Parking Charge Notices are issued by private owners of land if you contravene their parking conditions. These are a civil matter, you have not committed a driving offence if you receive one of these. I would not declare these on a Visa application.
- Penalty Charge Notices (PCN) are issued by Local Government bodies when you contravene the parking regulations. Note the term “contravention of regulation” rather than “offence” – these are not treated as criminal offence, they are effectively a matter for Civil Law rather than Criminal Law. I would not declare these on a Visa application.
- Excess Charge Notice. Some councils issue these notices instead of PCNs. These are charges that are enforced by Criminal Law. It is not clear to me whether the charge itself is a criminal matter or just the failure to pay would be a criminal matter. I’m not sure what to declare on a Visa Application
- Fixed Penalty Notice (FPN). These can be issued by the Police if they stop you when you commit an offence. There are different categories of FPN, endorsable ones result in points on the driver’s licence. FPNs can be issued for some parking offences, for example parking in particularly obstructive places. FPNs of any type are treated as driving offences and I would declare them on a Visa Application.
As to the question of how to remember what/whether offences you have committed: I can offer no great comfort, the expectation is that you should know, but I’m sure I would not know whether a parking fine from 5 years ago was a PCN or a FPN. Some folks would keep documents relating to these matters, but personally I would not have considered a paid parking fine worth keeping for long.
From living in the UK I would say no. Driving offences in the UK are for circumstances like speeding, dangerous driving, drink driving etc that gives you penalty points on your licence. Parking tickets do not give you penalty points just a fine issued by the local authority. When we fill out forms for our car insurance we do not state if we have parking fines just driving offences like the ones i stated above and how many penalty points we have on our licence. I would not list your parking offences down as this isn’t a personal offence. Your mother could be driving your car and get the parking ticket, but when issuing the ticket the parking officer doesn’t know who parked the car so the ticket is for the car owner not necessarily the one who caused the offence.
here is a list of driving offences that get you points in the UK, note parking offences aren’t on here
Credit:stackoverflow.com‘
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