When the Machine Won't Take Your Money: How Parking App Failures Are Costing Drivers Hundreds of Pounds

Imagine this: you've pulled into a car park, you've got somewhere important to be, and the pay-and-display machine is out of order. You download the parking app as instructed on a nearby sign, spend five minutes wrestling with it, and eventually give up — only to return to your car and find a £70 penalty charge notice tucked under your wiper. Sound familiar? For a growing number of UK drivers, this isn't a hypothetical. It's Tuesday.

As The Independent has highlighted, complaints about broken parking machines, glitchy apps, and confusing payment systems are surging — and with them, a wave of disputed fines that many drivers are successfully challenging on appeal. But for every motorist who wins, thousands more simply pay up, assuming the system is stacked against them. It doesn't have to be that way.

What's Actually Going On

The shift towards cashless and app-based parking over the past decade has transformed how councils and private operators manage their car parks. Pay-and-display machines are increasingly being replaced by or supplemented with smartphone apps — PayByPhone, RingGo, JustPark, and others — which councils and operators have embraced as cost-effective alternatives to maintaining physical infrastructure.

In theory, it's a sensible modernisation. In practice, the transition has been riddled with problems.

Drivers are reporting app crashes at critical moments, registration number entry errors that invalidate sessions, payment confirmations that never arrive, and — perhaps most infuriatingly — systems that appear to accept payment but fail silently in the background. Meanwhile, physical machines that haven't been decommissioned are frequently out of service, leaving motorists with no reliable way to pay at all.

The result? Penalty charge notices issued to drivers who genuinely attempted to pay, or who were left with no functioning payment option whatsoever.

Why This Matters More Than You Might Think

This isn't just an inconvenience story. There are real financial and legal stakes here — for individual drivers, and for the integrity of parking enforcement as a whole.

The scale is significant. Parking enforcement in the UK is a multi-billion-pound enterprise. Councils issued millions of PCNs last year, and private operators issued tens of millions more. Even a small percentage of those involving payment system failures represents an enormous number of unjust charges — many of which go unchallenged simply because drivers don't know their rights.

Older and less tech-savvy drivers are disproportionately affected. The rapid move away from cash and coin-operated machines has created genuine access problems. Not everyone has a smartphone. Not everyone is comfortable navigating a new app under time pressure in a car park. When councils and operators remove physical payment options without adequate alternatives, they are effectively creating conditions in which certain groups of people will inevitably be fined.

The signage is often woeful. Many parking sites display instructions that are ambiguous, outdated, or that direct drivers to apps which no longer function as described. Under UK parking regulations, signage must be clear and unambiguous — a requirement that is routinely ignored in practice.

The Legal Angle: What the Law Actually Says

This is where it gets interesting — and where drivers have considerably more power than they realise.

For Council-Issued PCNs

Parking enforcement by local authorities is governed primarily by the Traffic Management Act 2004 and the Civil Enforcement of Parking Contraventions (England) Regulations 2007. These frameworks place a legal obligation on councils to ensure that parking restrictions are properly signed and that payment systems are operational and accessible.

Crucially, if a payment machine is out of order and no adequate alternative is available, a driver who could not reasonably pay cannot be said to have committed a contravention. The contravention requires the opportunity to comply — remove that opportunity, and the legal basis for the charge weakens considerably.

When appealing, the relevant contravention codes are typically PCN Code 05 (parked after meter expired) or PCN Code 07 (paid less than required) — both of which can be challenged where the payment system itself was at fault.

For Private Parking Charges

Private parking operators are bound by the Code of Practice introduced under the Parking (Code of Practice) Act 2019, administered by either the British Parking Association (BPA) or the International Parking Community (IPC). The Code explicitly requires that payment systems must be maintained in working order, and that drivers must be given reasonable means to pay.

The Consumer Rights Act 2015 is also relevant here. A parking charge is effectively a contractual arrangement — you enter the car park, you agree (implicitly) to the terms displayed. If the operator cannot uphold their side of that arrangement by providing a functioning payment system, the contract argument becomes considerably more complex.

Additionally, under the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, private operators can only pursue the registered keeper for unpaid charges in specific circumstances — and a charge that was never legitimately incurred in the first place is far harder to enforce.

What Drivers Should Know: Practical Steps to Protect Yourself

If you ever find yourself in a situation where the parking payment system isn't working, here's what to do — both in the moment and afterwards.

In the Moment

• Photograph everything. Take clear, timestamped photos of the broken machine (showing any error messages or "out of order" notices), the signage directing you to the app, and your car in the location. This evidence is invaluable if you need to appeal later.
• Screenshot your app attempts. If the app fails to process your payment, screenshot the error message, the payment screen, and any confirmation (or lack thereof). Check your email and bank account — if money left your account, you have proof of an attempt to pay.
• Note the time precisely. Enforcement officers often log the time of the alleged contravention to the minute. You need to be able to demonstrate you were there, attempting to pay, at that time.
• Look for alternative payment options. Some sites have backup methods — a phone number, a different machine nearby, or a QR code. Exhaust all options and document each attempt.
• Leave a note. While not a legal defence in itself, leaving a note on your dashboard explaining that the machine was broken (with the time noted) can sometimes prompt an enforcement officer to use discretion.

When You Receive a PCN

• Don't ignore it. Even if you believe the charge is unjust, ignoring a PCN will result in the fine increasing — typically by 50% — and ultimately escalating to debt collection.
• Appeal at the informal stage first. For council PCNs, you have 28 days from the date of issue to make an informal representation. Do this before paying. If you pay, you lose the right to appeal. Use your photographic evidence and explain clearly what happened.
• For private charges, write directly to the operator within 28 days, citing the payment system failure and providing your evidence. If they reject your appeal, you can escalate to an independent appeals service — POPLA (for BPA members) or IAS (for IPC members).
• Reference the relevant regulations. In your appeal, explicitly mention that the payment system was not operational and that you were therefore unable to comply with the parking conditions through no fault of your own.

Looking Ahead: A System That Needs to Work for Drivers

The broader question raised by this issue is one of accountability. As parking payment infrastructure becomes increasingly digital, who bears responsibility when that infrastructure fails? Right now, the answer is effectively: the driver.

That is not a sustainable or fair position. The National Parking Platform — a government-backed initiative to standardise parking payment across councils — promises to improve consistency, but it will only help if the underlying systems are reliable and accessible to all.

There is a growing case for stronger regulatory requirements around payment system uptime and maintenance, clearer obligations on operators to notify drivers when systems are down, and — critically — an automatic presumption in favour of the driver where documented payment failure is involved.

Until those protections are in place, the burden falls on individual motorists to know their rights, gather evidence, and push back. The good news is that where payment system failure is properly documented, appeals succeed at a meaningful rate. The system is beatable — but only if you know how to challenge it.

The next time a parking machine swallows your card or an app crashes mid-payment, don't just shrug and accept the fine that follows. Document it, dispute it, and remember: the law is more on your side than the parking industry would like you to believe.