You’ve got to read this one between the lines and answer the questions you might have to the best of your imagination.

Background: for quite some years now London airports adopted a creative way to make some cash by charging drivers to drop-off or collect passengers. The charge itself is in the range of £5 to £10 and the free alternative normally offered is two hours grace period in the long term parking area together with a shuttle to get to and from the airport. All in, you save about an hour by paying the charge, so if you can manage to get in and out in ten minutes, it’s probably worth it (leaving the questionable charging practice itself aside).

What happened: I picked up my passengers and tried to pay the charge online as soon as I got home. The payment website gave me an error along the lines of «unable to find your licence plate number», so I tried again later, then the next day and the day after. All to the same result, so I gave up and stopped trying.

The penalty: A couple of weeks later I received a parking charge notice by post issued by a private company called NCP (it operates a number of parking locations in London and vicinity). The amount I was asked to pay was £100 reduced to £60 if paid within 14 days. The notice showed my car and all the details about time and date of the drop-off.

The appeal: I challenged the charge online on the NCP website, saying that I tried to pay for the drop-off, but couldn’t and that I’m still happy to pay for the drop-off itself, but not the associated fees. My appeal was rejected the next day without any response to the arguments made, however the charge was reduced to £20 «as a gesture of goodwill». This reduction alone made the time spent worthwhile, however I felt like I should go further.

Independent appeal: The procedure above has exhausted NCP’s internal appeal protocol, so I was given a reference number to take to an independent appeal service provided by an entity called POPLA. Today I received an email from them saying that NCP dropped all charges, so I thought this story could be helpful for others. Below is my full appeal contents ready to copy and paste:

I picked up passengers around 11AM on 19/11/2025 from Gatwick airport drop-off zone and tried to pay the parking charge as soon as I got home, however was unable to do so because the payment website returned an error saying that my licence plate number was not found. I tried to pay again later the same day and for a few days after, all to the same result. I’m happy to pay the charge itself, provided the facility to do so is functional, however deny any liability for the penalty charge. I’m attaching my browsing history that clearly shows multiple attempts to pay.