How Much Does It Cost to Get a Statutory Declaration Witnessed?

How much does it cost to get a statutory declaration witnessed?

Filing a PE2 and PE3 with the Traffic Enforcement Centre is free. The only cost is having the PE3 sworn in front of an authorised witness. The statutory floor is £5 plus £2 per exhibit at a solicitor under the Commissioners for Oaths (Fees) Order 1993. Online services charge £55 to £151. Our service is £49.

So the headline is simple. There is no government fee to file. The money only ever changes hands when you get your statutory declaration witnessed, because a PE3 has to be sworn in person before a Commissioner for Oaths, a Justice of the Peace, or an officer of the County Court. The rest of this page breaks down what each of those routes really costs, and where the £5 figure is genuinely accurate versus where it is a floor that hides the real effort involved.

One important exception. If you have a parking penalty and only need a TE9 witness statement, you do not need any of this. A TE9 is signed with a statement of truth and does not need a third-party witness at all, so there is nothing to pay for and no appointment to book. Route yourself to Parking Ticket Pal (parkingticketpal.com) instead. This page is about PE2 and PE3 forms for bus lane and moving traffic contraventions, which do need a witness.

Is filing the PE2 and PE3 with the TEC free?

Yes. Filing a PE2 and PE3 with the Traffic Enforcement Centre at Northampton is completely free. The TEC does not charge you to submit the forms, and it does not charge you to consider your application to file out of time. Under Civil Procedure Rules Part 75, the only unavoidable cost in the whole process is the witnessing of the statutory declaration itself.

This matters because it changes how you should think about price. You are not paying for the appeal, the filing, or the decision. Those are free. You are paying one person, once, to administer the oath and witness your signature so that the TEC will accept the form. A PE3 that is not properly sworn in person before an authorised witness will not be processed, so the witnessing is the single step that everything else depends on.

Get it right and a valid PE2 and PE3 suspends enforcement, typically for around six to eight weeks, and can revoke the Order for Recovery entirely, resetting the penalty to an earlier stage. That is the outcome you are buying. The question is simply which witnessing route gets you there with the least risk of rejection.

Why is the solicitor fee only £5?

The £5 figure comes from the Commissioners for Oaths (Fees) Order 1993, which sets the statutory fee for a Commissioner for Oaths at £5 to administer the oath, plus £2 for each exhibit. It is real and it is accurate. But it is a floor for the witnessing act alone, at a solicitor you have to find yourself, who will not help you fill in the form and will reject it if it is filled in wrong.

That is the catch behind the low number. The £5 buys you nothing except a signature and a stamp. The solicitor is not checking that your grounds under the PE3 are complete, that you have ticked the correct reason, or that the PE2 out-of-time application is even needed in your case. If any of it is wrong, you find out weeks later when the TEC rejects it, and by then your 21 day window may have closed.

There is a further problem that is easy to miss. Many firms simply will not witness a PE3. It is unfamiliar work, it carries the perjury exposure of the Perjury Act 1911, and plenty of high street solicitors decline it outright. So the £5 route often means ringing round several firms, being turned away, and losing days you do not have while the enforcement clock keeps running.

What about the County Court or online services?

An officer of the County Court can witness a statutory declaration for free, which is the cheapest route of all on paper. Online witnessing services charge roughly £55 to £151. Both carry a real cost that is not on the price tag. The County Court means finding one, travelling to it, and fitting its hours. Online services do not guarantee the TEC will accept the result.

The County Court is genuinely free and genuinely valid, so if cost is the only thing that matters and you have the time, it is a legitimate option. The trade-off is convenience. You have to locate a County Court that will do it, book in, travel there with the original printed forms, and appear during court hours. For most people juggling work, that free appointment costs a half day and a fair amount of stress.

Online services solve the convenience problem but introduce a different risk. For a PE3, the TEC expects an in-person sworn declaration made with the original hard copy in front of the witness. A remote or video-witnessed document may not meet that expectation, and £55 to £151 is a lot to pay for something that can still be bounced. When you compare the options side by side, a random solicitor at £5 saves money but not stress, the County Court is free but slow, and online is convenient but not guaranteed.

Why is our service £49, and what does that include?

Our £49 is not a witnessing fee. It is the whole job done properly. It includes the in-person appointment with a qualified solicitor and Commissioner for Oaths, the statutory oath fee itself, and a form-accuracy check on your PE2 and PE3 before you swear them, plus a guaranteed appointment usually within the same week. You leave with a document the TEC is set up to accept.

The value is in what the £5 route leaves out. Before you sign anything, the form is checked so the right reason is ticked, the grounds are complete, and the PE2 out-of-time application is present if your case needs it. Then it is sworn in person, with the original printed hard copy, exactly as the gov.uk PE3 guidance requires. You do not sign the PE3 beforehand. You sign in front of the witness, which is what makes it valid.

The witness is a qualified solicitor and Commissioner for Oaths in Crystal Palace, London, part of the Amphlett Lissimore firm, serving London. Appointments are usually the same week and take around ten minutes. Set against a £5 solicitor you have to hunt down who will not help and may refuse, a free County Court that costs you a half day, or an online service that may still be rejected, £49 buys the one thing that actually matters here: a PE3 sworn correctly, in person, checked, and accepted the first time.

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