Appeal a Heathrow
Airport Parking Charge
Heathrow is the busiest drop-off enforcement operation in the country. Every terminal forecourt is camera-controlled, the charge is triggered automatically on entry, and the notice arrives by post weeks later - which is exactly the situation the 14-day keeper-liability deadline was written for.
A Heathrow drop-off charge is an invoice from a private company, not a fine. Nothing was left on your windscreen: a camera read your registration as you entered the forecourt, the operator asked the DVLA for your address, and a Notice to Keeper was posted to you. That entire route only works if the notice was given within 14 days of the day after the event.
Heathrow's scale is exactly why those dates are worth checking. Four terminal forecourts issuing charges automatically means notices are produced and posted in bulk, and bulk is where deadlines slip. If yours arrived late they cannot hold you as keeper at all - they would have to prove who was driving, and a forecourt camera cannot tell them that.
The Heathrow forecourt problem
Heathrow's forecourts are read by ANPR at the entrance and exit, so the recorded period includes every second spent queueing to get in, crawling past four terminals of traffic, and waiting to get out again. None of that is parking, and the notice still has to specify the period of parking the charge relates to.
Drivers are also routinely caught out by the terminal loop: entering the wrong terminal forecourt, realising, and driving straight through to the right one can register as two separate chargeable events on the same journey. Two notices for one trip is worth challenging on its own terms.
Grounds we run on Heathrow charges
Checked in this order on a Heathrow notice, because this is the order that decides cases here.
No windscreen ticket means the 14-day rule applies, counted from the day after the event, with a posted notice treated as given on the second working day after posting. On a site issuing this volume it is the first thing worth checking and the most common thing to fail.
Heathrow's forecourts back up worse than anywhere else in the country. The camera records entry and exit, so the period on your notice includes every minute spent crawling in traffic and waiting to get out. None of that is parking, and the notice has to specify the period of parking the charge relates to.
The terminal loop makes this routine: head for T3, realise the flight leaves from T5, drive round, and each forecourt you touched can produce its own charge. Two notices are two separate cases and each must satisfy the statute on its own - it is common for one to fail where the other stands.
Heathrow reconfigures its forecourts and access roads regularly. A charge on private land depends on the terms having been displayed clearly enough, and in the right place, for a driver to read and act on before committing. The operator has to evidence what the signs said on your date, not today.
Schedule 4 dictates the contents, from the creditor's identity to the keeper-liability warning and the invitation to name the driver. These notices are template-generated at scale, so an omission is systematic rather than a one-off and is worth checking line by line.
What to gather before you appeal
Worth doing now rather than later - some of it gets harder to obtain as time passes.
- Your boarding pass or flight confirmation - it fixes which terminal you were actually going to and when
- Photographs of the signage on the approach you took, rather than the ones the operator chooses to produce
- Anything showing you passed through more than one terminal: satnav history, dashcam footage, or a second notice
- The envelope the Notice to Keeper arrived in, if you kept it, because the postmark speaks to when it was served
Who issues it, and how the appeal runs
Drop-off enforcement at all four terminals is handled by APCOA, the UK's largest private parking operator. Our dedicated APCOA appeal guide sets out how they run their appeals process and the grounds we put to them. Read the APCOA guide.
Whatever you do, do not write back naming the driver. At a camera-only site that is the one fact the operator cannot establish without your help, and volunteering it hands over the argument that decides most Heathrow cases.
Before you reply to anything, run the dates through the deadline calculator and the wording through the Notice to Keeper checker. Both are free and neither asks for an email address. If you would rather not deal with any of it, a real person here will handle the whole appeal for £10.
Heathrow Airport appeal FAQ
Heathrow's terminal forecourts are camera-enforced and the resulting charge notices are handled by APCOA, one of the UK's largest private parking operators. The same POFA Schedule 4 rules apply to them as to any other private operator.
It is common and it is challengeable. Entering one terminal forecourt and then another - or leaving and re-entering while circling - can generate two separate charge notices for a single journey. Each notice still has to satisfy the statutory requirements independently, and the double charge itself is worth putting to the operator.
You can appeal, though a short stop is not by itself the strongest ground. What usually decides it is whether the Notice to Keeper was served inside the POFA deadline and contains everything the statute requires. Upload the notice and we check both.
Other airports we cover
Related parking appeal guides
How airport drop-off enforcement works across the UK, and the grounds that apply wherever you were charged.
Airport notices arrive by post weeks later. Check whether yours was served inside the 14-day limit.
Gatwick's two terminals sit far enough apart that drivers regularly arrive at the wrong one, and the drop-off zones at both are camera-enforced.
£10 flat fee. Money back if a covered appeal is unsuccessful. Takes about two minutes.