Standard penalty charge notices key to fleet efficiency
Fleets have been urged to push for a standard format for all penalty charge notices to support smoother processing.
According to FleetCheck, the wide variation of documentation issued by local authorities, private parking companies and police forces makes it difficult for fleets to manage and process PCNs efficiently.
Callum Haymon-Collins, COO, FleetCheck, said: “Handling PCNs is a major bugbear for fleets and one that seems to be a greater burden year-by-year. Quantities are rising and some of our users are having to employ people purely to deal with them.
“A key complaint is that every issuer of PCNs appears to use their own format. This makes them slow for people to manually process because they often have to read every document in full but also reduces opportunities for automation.
“The wider the variance in document formats, the harder it becomes to engineer technology that produces consistently accurate results.”
He added: “The main difficulty fleets will face in pushing for a standard national format is the question of who might facilitate this happening? Probably the most obvious candidates are one of the industry bodies. Certainly, the evidence we see suggests that it would be a hugely popular move with fleet managers.”
