Appeal your parking fine

You can appeal your parking fine if you experienced an unexpected or unavoidable event, such as:

• a medical emergency
• you temporarily parked a damaged vehicle directly after an accident or your vehicle broke down.

You need to attach documentation that supports your exceptional circumstance and is relevant to the time and date of your fine.

Documents that help us review your fine include:

• a current accessible, residential or traders parking permit
• a relevant temporary parking permit
• a purchased parking ticket
• a photo of reported faulty meter
• medical evidence to demonstrate how the medical emergency resulted in the offence
• a receipt from a mechanic or tow truck
• a letter on company letterhead that verifies your exceptional circumstance.

You can appeal your parking fine if any of the following reduced your ability to understand or control the conduct that resulted in the offence:

• an intellectual disability
• a mental illness or disorder
• a serious addiction to drugs or alcohol
• homelessness
• family violence.

You can appeal your parking fine if you can't deal with your fines because of severe, disabling, long-term circumstances that relate mostly to issues other than financial hardship.

In your appeal, provide evidence from a qualified medical practitioner, social worker or drug and alcohol counsellor that:

• confirms the special circumstances
• explains how this significantly reduced your capacity to understand or control the behaviour that led to your fine.

For more details on special circumstances and what evidence to provide visit the Fines Victoria website.

If you need help applying, your health practitioner or case worker can apply on your behalf.

Other options for special circumstances

If your fine resulted from family violence, find out if you're eligible for support through the Family Violence Scheme on the Fines Victoria website.

For a different way to address your fine, such as counselling or unpaid work, find out if you're eligible for the Work and Development Permit on the Fines Victoria website.

You can appeal your parking fine if you believe one of the following:

• the fine is not valid (for example you received a fine for parking in a loading zone on a Saturday, but the zone rules only apply Monday to Friday)
• the officer who issued the fine acted unfairly, improperly or outside of the law or their authority.

In your appeal it's helpful to include a photo of the sign where your parking fine was issued.

If you were not in possession or control of your vehicle at the time of the offence, you need to say who was driving, so the fine can be re-issued to them. 

This is called nominating the responsible driver. Find out more on Fines Victoria Nominate the responsible driver page.

You should apply to nominate if:

• someone else was the driver responsible for the vehicle at the time of the offence
• you sold the vehicle to someone else before the offence date
• you got rid of the vehicle before the offence date
• you believe the vehicle or number plates displayed on the vehicle which committed the offence were stolen or cloned.

You will need to provide evidence to support your claim.

Submit a nomination statement

If you didn't know about your parking fine and missed the due date, you can apply to have the extra costs removed.

You can appeal your fine if you first found out about it through a notice in the post.

You need to appeal within 14 days of finding out about the fine.

You can't appeal your fine if you moved house, but did not notify VicRoads that you changed your address within 14 days of moving.

You will need to provide a reason as to why you did not know about the fine.

In your appeal, you need to provide evidence to support your claim that you were unaware. For example:

• an address change confirmation from VicRoads
• a report about your mail being stolen.

If your appeal is successful, you'll have another 21 days to pay your fine, and you won't have to pay any extra costs such as late fees.