About this site
Last reviewed:
I built Check My Letter because of a gap I kept running into. When an official letter arrives with a penalty on it, the two things you can find online are the issuing body’s own page, which is written to be correct rather than to be understood, and forum threads, where confident strangers give each other advice that was true four years ago in a different part of the country.
Neither is much use at eleven at night when you are holding a letter and want to know whether you are in trouble. This site tries to be the thing in between: plain English, specific to the document you are actually holding, with the real deadline, the real amount, and an honest answer about whether the letter can be challenged.
Who runs it
One person, independently, in the UK. I have chosen not to publish my name, and I would rather say that plainly than invent a byline or a team page that does not exist. Nothing on this site rests on who I am — it rests on whether each figure matches the official source cited beneath it, which you can check yourself in about a minute.
Check My Letter is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to any government department or enforcement body. It has no relationship with the DVLA, TV Licensing, the BBC, the NHS Business Services Authority, National Highways, Transport for London, or any local authority. If it did, it would not be able to tell you the parts they would rather not emphasise.
How the figures are checked
Every amount, deadline and address on this site was taken from the issuing body’s own published guidance and written down verbatim. Nothing is reproduced from memory, and nothing is estimated. The process for each page is the same:
- Find the official page that publishes the figure — GOV.UK, NHSBSA, TV Licensing, or the relevant tribunal.
- Copy the figure exactly, including the conditions attached to it.
- Link that source at the foot of the page, so you can check it rather than trust me.
- Date the page with the day the check was done.
- Where an official source does not publish a figure, say so and point you at the number printed on your own letter, instead of filling the gap with a plausible one.
That last rule is the one that matters most. A confidently wrong number does real damage to someone who is already worried, so several pages here deliberately say less than competing pages do. Where a claim could not be confirmed — the exact challenge window for an NHS penalty charge, or what happens to an unpaid DVLA penalty beyond debt collection — this site says it could not be confirmed rather than guessing.
Why the review date is on every page
These figures change. Licence fees rise in April, prescription and dental charges are reset each year, crossing charges were last changed in September 2025, and the rules on private parking have been rewritten, withdrawn and consulted on again without ever coming into force. A page without a date is a page you cannot assess.
So every page shows when it was last reviewed and links the source it was reviewed against. If the date is old and the amount matters to you, check the source before relying on it — that is what it is there for.
What this site will not do
It will not tell you to ignore a letter. Most of these documents are generated automatically, which means nobody has judged you, and also means nothing in the system will ever learn your side of the story unless you tell it. Silence is almost never the cheaper option.
It also does not give legal advice, and it cannot deal with your case. It explains what a document is and what the published rules say. For advice on your own situation, contact the issuing authority, Citizens Advice, or a qualified adviser. See the full disclaimer for what that means in practice.
Corrections
If a figure here is wrong or out of date, I would genuinely like to know, and it will be fixed. Email contact@checkmyletter.co.uk with the page and the official source that contradicts it. Corrections are made to the page and the review date is updated, so the change is visible rather than silent.