Is this penalty letter genuine, or a scam?

A different question from the rest of the site: not “what does this penalty mean?” but “is this a penalty at all?”

The short version is reassuring. A letter that arrives by post is far less commonly faked than a text or an email: printing and posting costs money and leaves a trail. That is a useful starting point, not proof.

Why “spotting the fake” is the wrong approach

Almost every page on this subject offers a checklist: bad spelling, an odd sender address, a threatening tone. That list is near the bottom of this page. It catches careless scams only.

A competent fake has none of them. It is spelled correctly, the logo is right, the reference number has the right shape. If your method is visual inspection, a good fake beats you and a clumsy real letter fails.

So the spine of this page is a different test, one that does not go out of date when the scams change:

One honest limitation: no official source publishes a description of what a genuine DVLA letter physically looks like — no letterhead guide, no paper stock, no format. The same is true of NHS penalty charge notices. Any page that describes one is guessing.

Two minutes, without touching the message.

If it is about vehicle tax or SORN

The cleanest check on the site. Go to the vehicle tax checker on GOV.UK — type the address yourself, or search for it — and enter only the registration number.

That gives you the vehicle’s tax and SORN status straight from the DVLA record. Allow up to 2 working days for a new application to show.

Two DVLA facts settle most of these cases. DVLA will never ask for bank account details, or ask you to confirm payment details, unless you contacted it first. And vehicle tax refunds are issued automatically — it never sends a link to claim one. A message offering a refund link is not a borderline case.

If it is any other letter

Same shape. Find the issuing body’s own website independently and use the contact route published there. Never the number in the message, never the link, never the QR code.

For an NHS penalty charge that means reaching the NHSBSA “respond to your letter” service yourself; for a council penalty, the council’s own website; for a private parking charge, the operator’s own site.

TV Licensing has published details you can check against

This is the one issuer that documents its own contact fingerprint:

• Genuine emails come from [email protected] or [email protected].
• Genuine phone calls come from numbers starting 0300.
• Genuine correspondence includes your name and part of your postcode. A “Dear Customer” greeting is a scam signal.
• TV Licensing will never text you to say you are due a refund, ask for bank details by text, ask for personal details before you have signed in, or ask for passwords, card details or one-time codes over WhatsApp.

Parking: texts and QR codes

Councils have warned about fake parking-fine texts since September 2024 — West Suffolk, Medway, Cheshire West and Chester, Wakefield, Hartlepool and Three Rivers among them. The message links to a convincing government-styled page, asks for your registration number, then shows a small invented fine.

One checkable fact defeats all of them: a council PCN is placed on the vehicle or sent by post. Councils do not issue them by text.

Knowsley, Cheshire West and Chester, and East Lothian confirmed from June 2025 that fraudulent QR stickers were being placed over the genuine codes on parking meters, often impersonating RingGo, leading to a card-harvesting site. Check whether the sticker sits on top of another. Safer still, use the operator’s own app that you installed yourself, or the number printed on the machine. Do not scan QR codes in emails or texts.

Clean air zones and ULEZ: the payment-site trap

Third-party sites impersonate the official payment portals, sometimes charging more than the daily rate, sometimes charging for a compliant vehicle that owes nothing. The money never reaches the council, so the driver is fined anyway. Newcastle City Council and Bath and North East Somerset Council have both warned about it, and it happened at scale during the London ULEZ expansion in August 2023.

Reach the payment page through GOV.UK or the council’s own site — never a search advert, which is where these sites buy their position.

1. Do not click the link, do not scan the code, do not reply, and do not call the number in the message. Nothing is lost by waiting two minutes.
2. Find the official service yourself — type the address, or search for it. Never navigate from the message you are checking.
3. For a vehicle, check the tax and SORN status on GOV.UK using only the registration number. Allow up to 2 working days for a recent application to appear.
4. For anything else, use the contact route published on the issuing body’s own site to ask whether the reference exists.
5. If it turns out to be genuine, deal with it through that official route — the one you found — and not through the message.
6. If it is fake, report it. The routes are in the table below, and they differ depending on where you live and how the message arrived.
7. If you still cannot tell, contact the issuing body using details you found yourself and ask. That is a normal question and they are used to it.
8. Do not decide it is a scam because it frightened you. Verify first, then act.

This page inverts the usual advice on this site, and the limits of that matter.

A scam message can be ignored. You owe nothing to someone impersonating an authority: report it and delete it.

A genuine letter cannot. Everything the rest of this site says about deadlines and automatic escalation applies in full.

You may not be able to tell which you are holding at a glance, which is why “it looked suspicious, so I binned it” is a dangerous rule. Treating a real letter as a scam is a common way to miss a discount window, and it does not stop existing because it was thrown away.

So the order is fixed: verify first, then act. Ignore only once you have confirmed, independently, that there is nothing there.

The reverse error is worth naming. Paying quickly to make an uncomfortable message go away is exactly what the urgency is designed to produce; pressure to pay within hours is itself a reason to slow down.

If money has gone, the order matters and the bank comes first.

Contact your bank immediately

Use the number on your card, or the app you already had installed — not anything from the message. Banks have processes for this, and speed affects what can be done.

Then report it

Report Fraud covers England, Wales and Northern Ireland; in Scotland it is Police Scotland on 101. Details are in the table above.

The reimbursement rules

Mandatory reimbursement for authorised push payment fraud has applied since 7 October 2024 under the Payment Systems Regulator’s PS24/7. It covers Faster Payments, with the Bank of England applying the same cap to CHAPS. The maximum is £85,000 per claim, which the PSR says covers 99.8% of Faster Payments APP scams by volume.

Two things this page will not do. It will not tell you that you will get your money back: exceptions exist, they were not verified in detail here, and no page that has never seen your case can promise an outcome. And it will not describe those exceptions, because guessing would be worse than silence.

The scheme is mandatory rather than discretionary, generous in scope, and your bank is where a claim starts.

If you clicked but paid nothing

Clicking is not the same as losing money. Close the page. If you entered card details, call your bank as above. Change any password you typed, and change it anywhere else you used the same one.

The red flags — and why they are last, not first

Each tell, with the body that named it. Urgency and threats, including of driving bans or court action (DVLA, DVSA and the Department for Transport, joint warning of 10 July 2025; also TV Licensing). Bank details requested by text or email (DVLA; TV Licensing). A refund offered behind a link (DVLA; TV Licensing). “Dear Customer” (TV Licensing). Invented reference numbers, poor spelling, odd sender addresses (TV Licensing). Payment demanded on a site that is not the official domain (Newcastle City Council; West Suffolk Council). A QR sticker on top of another (Knowsley Council).

Around 20,000 people reported suspected DVLA-related fraud to DVLA in 2024. This is common, not a failing of the careless.

Now the honest part. A competent fake has none of those tells. The checklist catches careless scams and nothing else; independent verification catches all of them. That is why it is at the top of this page and the list is at the bottom.

Does the DVLA ever text people about vehicle tax?

Treat any text about tax as something to verify rather than act on. DVLA has published that it will never ask for bank account details or ask you to confirm payment details unless you contacted it first, and that vehicle tax refunds are issued automatically — it never sends a link to claim one. You can settle the question yourself in under a minute by checking the vehicle at gov.uk/check-vehicle-tax using only the registration number.

Are the QR codes on parking meters safe to scan?

Not automatically. From June 2025 councils including Knowsley, Cheshire West and Chester, and East Lothian confirmed that fraudulent stickers were being placed over the genuine QR codes on meters, often impersonating RingGo, leading to a site that harvests card details. Check whether the sticker sits on top of another or shows signs of tampering, and prefer the operator’s own app that you installed yourself, or the phone number printed on the machine.

Which email addresses does TV Licensing actually use?

Genuine emails come from [email protected] or [email protected], and genuine phone calls come from numbers starting 0300. Genuine correspondence includes your name and part of your postcode, so a “Dear Customer” greeting is a scam signal. Scam texts can be screenshotted and sent to [email protected].

I already clicked the link. What now?

Clicking on its own is not the same as losing money. Close the page without entering anything. If you did enter card details, contact your bank immediately through the number on your card or the app you already had. If you typed a password, change it there and anywhere else you used the same one. Then report the message.

How do I report a scam text or email?

Forward suspicious texts free to 7726, and suspicious emails to [email protected]. To report the fraud itself in England, Wales or Northern Ireland, use Report Fraud at reportfraud.police.uk or 0300 123 2040 — this is the service that was previously called Action Fraud, renamed with full public launch in January 2026. In Scotland, report to Police Scotland on 101 instead; Report Fraud does not cover Scotland.

If I report it, do I get my money back?

Reporting and reimbursement are separate things, and this page will not promise you an outcome. Mandatory reimbursement for authorised push payment fraud has applied since 7 October 2024 under the Payment Systems Regulator’s PS24/7, covering Faster Payments with a maximum of £85,000 per claim. Exceptions to the scheme exist and are not described here because they could not be verified in detail. Your bank is the place to start, and contacting it quickly matters.