Vehicle idling: guidance for local authorities
This guidance supports local authorities in tackling vehicle idling offences by providing information on the applicable regulations and the process for issuing Fixed Penalty Notices.
3. Payments and disputes
In reporting on the issuing FPNs for statutory idling offences, local authorities should ensure compliance with their own administrative processes in addition to the recommendations outlined above in 2.5.
3.1 Notice and Payment Methods
Local authorities should ensure that there is a choice of payment methods for persons issued with FPNs. In the case of physical payment, payment centres should be readily available and easily accessible, such as at the local authority offices.
Fixed penalties that are not paid by the end of the payment period as set by the local authority are enforceable (in a like manner as an extract registered decree arbitral bearing a warrant for execution issued by the sheriff court of any sheriffdom in Scotland). This means that they are enforceable as if they were a formal order from the court in respect of the money owed and can be enforced as if there were a warrant for execution so that the authority may instruct sheriff officers to serve a charge for payment.
3.2 Resolving Disputes / Answering Queries
The person receiving an FPN may wish to query or dispute it. Upon issuing of the FPN, drivers should be informed of their right to dispute the FPN, and/or request a hearing in respect of the stationary idling offence.
Drivers must correspond with the local authority to dispute or query an FPN and the FPN must contain the address to which correspondence in respect of the FPN should be sent. Disputing an FPN does not ensure the FPN will fall nor suspend the period of payment. Following consideration of any query or dispute raised in respect of an FPN, the local authority should answer queries as appropriate and where a dispute has been made, consider whether the FPN should be withdrawn. The local authority should correspond with the person to whom the FPN was issued and the response from the local authority must clearly state either that the FPN remains extant and that full payment must be made within the payment period, OR that having reviewed the circumstances, the local authority has decided to withdraw the FPN.
3.3 Requesting a Hearing
Under regulation 19, drivers issued with an FPN have the right the request a hearing in respect of the statutory idling offence to which the FPN relates.
A request for a hearing should be received by the relevant local authority no later than the 28th day after the day the FPN was issued and the FPN must contain the contact details of the person to whom a request for a hearing should be made. Local authorities should acknowledge receipt of a request within 7 days.
Once a hearing has been requested, the FPN falls and the fixed penalty is no longer payable. The authority may then notify the Procurator Fiscal of the hearing request, and any further action taken in respect of the stationary idling offence will then be determined by the Procurator Fiscal.
3.4 Withdrawal of FPNs
Under regulation 21(1) of the 2003 Regulations, an FPN may be withdrawn in any case where it is determined by the local authority that it should not have been issued, or should not have been issued to the person named in the FPN. Where an FPN has been withdrawn, a notice of withdrawal must be given to the recipient of the FPN, any amount paid in respect of the FPN must be repaid, and no proceedings may be started or continued against the person for the stationary idling offence in connection to which the FPN was issued.