One Camera Car Earned Leicester £366,000 in Fines in Four Months

A single unmarked car fitted with an automatic number plate recognition camera has issued 5,229 fixed penalty notices on the streets of Leicester in four months, generating £366,030 in fines at £70 each. Leicester City Council bought the vehicle for £57,000 in March, meaning it paid for itself inside the first month on the road. A second CCTV car is now being procured, which means the volume of instant fines is about to roughly double.

Unlike a fixed speed camera or a parking meter, the car gives drivers no warning it is coming. It can be sent to any street the council decides has a “persistent issue” with illegal parking. The contraventions it catches are moving traffic offences rather than overstaying a paid bay, so there is no way to top up a meter or move the car once the camera has recorded the breach. The fine is automatic, and for most drivers it will be the first they hear of the offence.

How the Camera Car Actually Works

The vehicle, introduced on 1 April, drives pre-planned routes fitted with an ANPR camera that reads number plates and cross-references them against restrictions in real time. Leicester City Council says it targets three specific contraventions: parking on red routes, stopping on the zigzag markings outside schools, and blocking bus stop clearways. All three carry an immediate £70 penalty charge notice, reduced to £35 if paid within 14 days.

In its first 28 days of operation, the car issued 1,475 fines for illegal parking on red routes on London Road, Gravel Street and Abbey Lane alone, plus a further 34 for parking outside eight city schools. Councillor Geoff Whittle, the assistant city mayor for environment and transport, said the council would only send the car to “areas where there are persistent issues with illegal parking, but no current fixed camera enforcement,” effectively using it to plug gaps between the city’s permanent camera network.

The Numbers Behind the Fine Income

By 31 July, four months after launch, the cumulative total had reached 5,229 fixed penalty notices. At the full £70 rate that is worth £366,030, though the true figure will be lower once early payment discounts and unpaid or successfully appealed tickets are stripped out. The council has confirmed the vehicle and its running costs are paid entirely from fine income, with any surplus legally required to be ringfenced for local road safety schemes rather than general council spending.

What the council has not published is a breakdown of how many of the 5,229 penalty notices have actually been paid, how many were formally challenged, or how much surplus above running costs has been generated so far. Given the £57,000 purchase price was recovered within roughly four to five weeks at the pace fines were issued in month one, the vehicle has likely been running at a significant profit for most of its four months in service, before a second car doubles that capacity.

Why the Lack of Warning Changes Everything

Fixed cameras and yellow-box warning signs give drivers a chance to spot the restriction before they commit an offence. A roving ANPR car removes that opportunity entirely. Councillor Whittle has defended this directly, saying the point is to send “a strong message that illegal and dangerous parking will not go unpunished,” rather than to warn drivers off in advance the way a visible camera housing does.

That approach is legally sound: moving traffic contraventions enforced by camera do not require the same signed and lined warning zones as a speed camera, provided the underlying restriction, such as a red route or school zigzag, is itself correctly signed and marked under the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions. The issue for drivers is less about legality and more about scale. A car that can appear anywhere in the city with no visible presence and no prior enforcement history at that location is, by design, catching people who had no reason to expect a camera there that day.

How to Fight a Camera Car Fine

Every penalty charge notice issued by the CCTV car should state the exact contravention code, time, date and location, and the council is required to hold photographic evidence to support it. Anyone who receives one has clear routes to challenge it rather than simply paying.

The first step is an informal or formal representation to Leicester City Council within 28 days, in writing, setting out the grounds. Common successful grounds include the vehicle being stopped rather than parked, for example briefly to set down a passenger with hazard lights on, a valid loading or blue badge exemption not being recognised, or signage at that specific location being missing, obscured or contradictory. The council must respond in writing and, if it rejects the challenge, must offer a Notice of Rejection setting out the right to appeal.

If the council rejects the challenge, the next step is a free appeal to the Traffic Penalty Tribunal, an independent adjudication service for parking and moving traffic penalties issued outside London. There is no cost to appeal and no requirement for legal representation, and tribunal adjudicators decide purely on the evidence submitted by both sides. Nationally, more than half of cases that reach adjudication are won by the driver, most commonly over unclear signage, administrative errors on the notice itself, or genuine mitigating circumstances such as a medical emergency or breakdown.

Ignoring a penalty charge notice is the one option that reliably makes things worse. An unpaid PCN escalates to a charge certificate, then to registration as a debt through the county court, and finally to bailiff enforcement, at which point additional fees are added on top of the original £70. Anyone unsure whether their fine is valid should challenge it in writing within the 28-day window rather than let it run.

How Leicester Compares With Other Cities Trying the Same Approach

Leicester is not the only council experimenting with camera-equipped vehicles rather than fixed cameras. A handful of other English cities have piloted similar roving ANPR patrols for red routes and school streets over the past two years, generally finding the same pattern Leicester has seen: a small number of persistent hotspot streets account for a disproportionate share of the fines once a vehicle starts patrolling them regularly. What makes Leicester’s rollout notable is the pace. Reaching 5,229 fixed penalty notices within four months of a single vehicle going live is a faster ramp-up than most comparable schemes, and it explains why the council is already procuring a second car rather than waiting to review a full year of data first.

For residents, the practical takeaway is that the streets already targeted, London Road, Gravel Street, Abbey Lane and the eight schools named in the council’s own figures, are the highest-risk locations right now, and a second vehicle is likely to extend that list rather than simply repeat patrols on the same roads. Anyone who regularly stops briefly on a red route or near a school gate in those areas, even for what feels like a few seconds, is now facing meaningfully higher odds of being caught than before April.

The council has not said which streets the second CCTV car will cover once it goes into service, only that it is being procured using the same fine-funded model as the first. Given how quickly the initial vehicle identified its highest-yielding locations, drivers in areas with a known history of school-run congestion or bus stop obstruction, even outside the roads already named, would be sensible to treat those spots as likely candidates for the next wave of camera patrols rather than waiting for an official announcement.

Sources:

• Hundreds fined for illegal parking by new CCTV car – Leicester City Council
• Council car equipped with CCTV cameras issues ‘immediate’ £70 fine to 1,500 drivers in one month – GB News
• How to appeal – Traffic Penalty Tribunal