I was recently issued with a fixed penalty notice while on a night out. I tried to phone the number on the ticket to pay but the number was no longer in use. I therefore had to post the ticket with my bank details filled in to the address on the ticket. This was later sent back by Royal Mail as the address was no longer in use. Two days after this I received a letter from the courts stating the fine was now £120 due to non-payment of the original £80. I phoned the number given on the letter and spoke to a lady whom advised sending copies of the notice and the returned envelope to their new address so it could be reviewed and the fine dropped back to the original £80. The lady informed me that there were still "a few rogue officers" issuing these out of date penalty notices. Feel as though I was set up to fail in paying the fine by the officers who issued it. Not sure how to continue with this. Any advice would be much appreciated.

So when phone did not work, you did not look it up on the internet, call operator, or even drive down to the court and check?

Sorry while the ticket should have the correct info, you should have put more effort into contacting them

Seeing as this is an international site, and you are in the UK somewhere, it is diffficult to advise on your next approach, but they did reduce the fine back down to the original so I guess the only defence is no defence, just pay and forget it. Unless of course you want to jump out of the frying pan into the fire.

... spoke to a lady whom advised sending copies of the notice and the returned envelope to their new address so it could be reviewed and the fine dropped back to the original £80. ...

And did this work?

I personally hate it when the Police have an unlisted phone number and provide a fake address.