It’s sure to ruin your day: coming back to your car to find a little ticket fluttering against your windscreen. It’s particularly infuriating when you believe you didn’t deserve it. The question is: what can you do about it?
Parking tickets in NSW are generally issued by local councils and administered by Revenue NSW. If you have received a parking ticket that you don’t think you should have to pay, there is a review process available via the Revenue NSW website. You can find the address for the site on your parking ticket.
That review page offers you a dialogue box in which you can explain why you shouldn’t have to pay the ticket and allows you to attach any evidence you have to back up your application.
Getting out of a ticket depends heavily on how you use these options.
It helps to understand that when you submit a review application, it goes to someone within Revenue NSW who is applying a policy to decide if you should have to pay or not. That policy contains a list of common reasons for review, and when each will or won’t be accepted.
So, for a review application to have the best chance, it needs to be tailored to that person applying that policy.
How?
1. Work out which category of the policy your situation best fits into and use the language of the guidelines in that dialogue box.
For example:
- If someone was sick and you had to attend to them instead of moving your car, use the term “medical emergency”.
- If you struggled to start your car, use “broken down”.
2. Attach evidence. I’ll let you in on a secret: Revenue officers will not fill gaps in your application or make even obvious assumptions to help your application get through (it is called Revenue, after all). If the logic of your application depends on a certain fact, you need to attach proof of that fact.
For example, for a medical emergency, you’ll need proof that covers:
- Who had the emergency
- At what time (this needs to line up with the ticket)
- Why it meant that the car couldn’t be moved (were they the driver or did someone require assistance from the driver?)
And by proof, I mean evidence that can’t be refuted, such as photos, or evidence that wasn’t generated by you, like a letter from a treating doctor, a statutory declaration made by a witness or receipts for payments.
If your review application is unsuccessful and you still wish to challenge the fine, it is sometimes possible to contact the local council and appeal to the inspector who issued the ticket and/or their supervisor. This is an informal process that will work on some occasions and not others but might be worth a try.
After that, your only option is to elect to have the ticket decided in court. If your only concern is the value of the ticket, generally our advice is not to take this route because it’s expensive and time consuming. However, if you’re worried for another reason, such as demerit points it might be worth going down this path. Please feel free to contact one of Ainsley Law’s solicitors today for personalised advice based on your situation.
And for everyone else: good luck for your reviews!
