Aberdeen’s Low Emission Zone Fined Drivers Almost £4 Million in a Single Year

• Aberdeen City Council issued 20,635 low emission zone fines in 2025/26, worth £3,974,220 if every one is paid in full.
• Glasgow’s zone brought in £513,873 in penalties last year but cost £781,765 to run, leaving the council £267,892 out of pocket.
• Edinburgh lost roughly £800,000 in fines after the DVLA could not trace who owned the vehicles being fined.

Three Scottish cities have now published a full year or more of low emission zone enforcement figures, and the numbers show three very different outcomes for the drivers, councils and taxpayers involved. Aberdeen’s zone has raised almost £4 million in fines in a single year. Glasgow’s zone now costs more to run than it brings in. And Edinburgh’s council says it has lost roughly £800,000 after the DVLA’s own vehicle records proved too inaccurate to chase the drivers responsible. Anyone who drives an older petrol or diesel car into a Scottish city centre is now exposed to a penalty system that varies sharply depending on which side of the country they are on.

Low emission zones ban the most polluting vehicles, generally older diesels below the Euro 6 standard and older petrol cars below Euro 4, from designated city centre streets unless the driver pays a penalty charge. Glasgow was first to enforce its zone, in June 2023, followed by Dundee and Aberdeen in May and June 2024, then Edinburgh in June 2024. All four link back to the same Scottish Government target of cutting transport emissions, but the way each council has run the scheme, and the amount it has actually collected from drivers, has diverged enormously.

The zone that stopped paying for itself

Glasgow’s numbers tell the clearest story of a scheme running out of road. A council report seen by STV News shows the city’s LEZ brought in £982,415 in penalty income in its first full year of enforcement, 2023/24. That fell to just over £750,000 in 2024/25, then to £513,873 in 2025/26, a drop of almost half in two years. Around 2,000 penalty charge notices were issued every month between April 2025 and March 2026.

Running the scheme, however, has not got any cheaper. Glasgow’s operating costs rose from £614,000 in 2024/25 to £781,765 in 2025/26, leaving the council with a net cost of £267,892 for the year, the first time the zone’s costs have exceeded its income. The council’s own report attributes the falling revenue to rising compliance: more drivers now have vehicles that meet the emission standard, and more are aware the zone exists at all.

Most of the money still comes from ordinary car drivers rather than commercial operators. Cars accounted for 78 percent of the fines issued in Glasgow in 2025/26, with light vans making up a further 21 percent. Drivers who did fight their fines had a good chance of success: the council received 3,078 appeals and upheld 2,531 of them, an 82 percent success rate. The most common reasons were that the driver held a Blue Badge, could show the vehicle was actually compliant or exempt, or had simply had their registration plate entered incorrectly on the system.

Glasgow’s fine structure is the model most other Scottish cities have copied. A first offence costs £60, cut to £30 if paid within 14 days. Each further breach by the same vehicle within a rolling 90-day window doubles the charge, up to a ceiling of £480 for cars and light vans, and £960 for buses, coaches and HGVs. More than 100 vehicles in Glasgow have already been fined at the maximum £960 rate after being caught a fifth time.

Aberdeen’s fines dwarf its neighbours

Aberdeen’s zone, which covers more than 100 streets around the city centre, has produced far larger numbers than Glasgow’s. Council data shows 20,635 penalty charge notices were issued to non-compliant vehicles in 2025/26, worth £3,974,220 in total if every fine is paid in full. Just over 14,600 of those were standard first-offence fixed penalties. The remaining Level 5 fines, reserved for vehicles caught entering the zone on five or more occasions within 90 days and capped at £960, accounted for 2,481 penalties on their own, worth close to £2.4 million.

Aberdeen’s figures dwarf both Glasgow’s and Edinburgh’s. The zone has been running for a similar length of time, but appears to be catching far more repeat offenders among commercial vehicles, which face the same £960 ceiling as buses and coaches once they have racked up five breaches. Local businesses near the zone’s edge have said the charges are making it harder for customers and suppliers to reach them, though the council has not published a breakdown of how much of the £3,974,220 has actually been collected once appeals and non-payment are accounted for.

Why Edinburgh’s own data cost it £800,000

Edinburgh’s experience shows a different way a low emission zone can go wrong for the people running it. In its first nine months of enforcement, from June 2024 to March 2025, the council brought in £1,050,780 in penalty income, and after covering the cost of running the scheme was left with almost £800,000 to spend on projects including a long-delayed bus lane scheme. On paper, that looks like the most successful of the three cities.

But a council report published in February 2026 revealed that roughly £800,000 more had been lost: a large share of penalty charge notices could not be enforced at all. The council said the top reason for writing off LEZ fines, accounting for 81 percent of cases, was that DVLA records showed no trace of the vehicle’s registered keeper. A further 13 percent went undelivered, sent to an incorrect address held by DVLA. Almost 13,000 cases were sitting in the council’s debt recovery system at the time of the report, with more than 9,700 of those actively being chased.

The DVLA disputed the council’s account, saying Edinburgh had never formally notified it of the data problems, though it said it was willing to work with the council to fix issues once they are raised. The council said the DVLA data problem was not unique to Edinburgh and that it had raised the issue through a British Parking Association consultation covering councils across the country. Of the 3,074 formal challenges Edinburgh received against LEZ fines, 2,773 were reversed, most often the result of a driver holding a Blue Badge without applying for the specific LEZ exemption, or DVLA’s own vehicle information being wrong. Edinburgh’s payment rate has improved: a council spokesperson said 77 percent of penalty charge notices were now being paid on time, up from 70 percent when the scheme first launched.

Can you avoid it

The single biggest protection against a low emission zone fine is knowing whether a vehicle actually needs to comply before it enters one. Petrol cars registered from around 2006 onwards generally meet the Euro 4 standard used by Scotland’s zones, and diesel cars registered from around September 2015 onwards generally meet the stricter Euro 6 standard. Anything older than that should be checked individually using the free vehicle checker on mygov.scot, which confirms compliance from a number plate in seconds and is the same source councils use to decide who gets fined.

Blue Badge holders are not automatically exempt. Every one of the three councils’ own figures shows Blue Badge status as one of the most common reasons a fine is later cancelled, which means large numbers of badge holders are being fined first and refunded only after they appeal. Anyone who holds a Blue Badge and expects to drive into Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen or Dundee should apply for the specific LEZ exemption in advance through their council’s website rather than assuming the badge itself is enough.

Keeping DVLA records current makes a bigger difference than most drivers realise. Both the DVLA and Edinburgh council confirmed that registered keepers are legally responsible for making sure their name and address are correct, and that incorrect records are now one of the largest single causes of unresolved fines and debt recovery cases. Updating a vehicle’s keeper details takes a few minutes on the DVLA’s website and can prevent a fine escalating through the 90-day doubling system before a driver even knows it exists.

If a fine does arrive, paying within 14 days halves the cost from £60 to £30 in every city that uses this structure, and is almost always cheaper than waiting to see whether an appeal succeeds. For drivers who believe the fine was issued in error, whether the vehicle is actually compliant, was diverted into the zone by roadworks, or the registration was logged incorrectly, all three councils’ own figures show the majority of properly evidenced appeals succeed. The paperwork is worth doing before the payment deadline rather than after it.

Sources: Glasgow City Council Low Emission Zone report, reported by STV News, published 6 August 2026; Aberdeen City Council low emission zone penalty data, reported by Aberdeen Business News, published 8 April 2026; City of Edinburgh Council Low Emission Zone report and DVLA statement, reported by Edinburgh News, published 14 February 2026; mygov.scot, Low Emission Zones guidance.