Lancashire Bus Lane Fines Fell 28.8 Percent but One Gate Still Issued 26,426 Notices

• Lancashire County Council’s civil enforcement report for 2025-26 counts 65,098 bus lane and bus gate penalty notices, 28.8 percent fewer than the 91,369 issued a year earlier.
• Two Corporation Street bus gates, Marsh Lane with 26,426 notices and Heatley Street with 12,808, produced 39,234 of them, or 60.3 percent of the county total.
• A notice costs £70, drops to £35 if paid within 21 days of service and climbs to £105 once a charge certificate is issued.

Two Corporation Street Bus Gates Produced 39,234 of Lancashire’s 65,098 Notices

Lancashire County Council issued 65,098 bus lane and bus gate penalty charge notices between April 2025 and March 2026. That is 26,271 fewer than the 91,369 issued in 2024-25, a fall of 28.8 percent. Two gates on Corporation Street still produce most of the county’s notices: Marsh Lane issued 26,426 and Heatley Street 12,808, which adds up to 39,234, or 60.3 percent of the total.

Every one of those notices starts at £70. Pay within 21 days of service and the council halves it to £35. Miss that window and a charge certificate follows, which adds 50 percent and takes the bill to £105. On a single notice, the gap between paying early and paying late is £70.

Videalert supplies the council’s ANPR cameras, which read the plates, and the notice goes to the registered keeper of the vehicle. Under the Traffic Management Act 2004 the owner carries the liability, whoever was behind the wheel. Spread across the year, 65,098 notices is an average of 178 a day, against 250 a day in 2024-25. Marsh Lane alone averaged 72 a day.

The monthly count fell from 16,179 in July 2024 to 4,647 in March 2026

Both Corporation Street gates went live on 21 May 2024 with a warning-only start. In its announcement the day before, the council said no fines would be issued at first and that penalty notices would follow a short grace period of undisclosed length. County Councillor Rupert Swarbrick, the cabinet member for Highways and Transport, said: “We won’t be issuing fines initially while people get used to the changes, so please be aware of the changes on these roads and follow the correct route using the clearly displayed signs.” He also said: “By reducing congestion on Corporation Street, we can increase the reliability for public transport and encourage more people to think about catching the bus.”

The monthly figures show a low start and then a jump. Bus lane notices stood at 2,289 in May 2024 and 1,388 in June, then rose to 16,179 in July, the highest month in the two years of data. August brought 12,082, September 12,611 and October 10,936. By March 2025 the monthly count had dropped to 5,564, which is 65.6 percent below the July peak.

The 2025-26 year opened at 7,033 in April 2025 and closed at 4,647 in March 2026, a drop of 33.9 percent. The lowest month was February 2026 with 4,051. Lancashire County Council gives no reason for the decline in its figures, so the data shows what happened and leaves the cause open.

That start-up changes how you read the 28.8 percent fall. The 2024-25 total includes the gates’ warning-only weeks and the first months of fines, and the report does not say when the first fine notices went out. The year-on-year drop compares the launch year with the year after it.

Which gates issued more notices this year

The two big gates fell sharply. Marsh Lane dropped from 49,394 notices to 26,426, a fall of 22,968 or 46.5 percent. Heatley Street went from 21,029 to 12,808, down 8,221 or 39.1 percent. Together they produced 77.1 percent of the county’s notices in 2024-25 and 60.3 percent in 2025-26.

Across the rest of the network the count rose. Strip out the two Corporation Street gates and the rest of the network issued 20,946 notices in 2024-25 and 25,864 in 2025-26, up 4,918 or 23.5 percent. Four of the five busiest remaining locations grew. Fishergate-Butler Street issued 5,826 notices, up 26.0 percent from 4,625. Fishergate-Cheapside issued 4,572, up 41.5 percent from 3,230. Tithebarn Street issued 3,630, up 48.6 percent from 2,443, and Garstang Road (Broughton South) 3,137, up 12.3 percent from 2,794.

Hammerton Street, a bus gate live from 7 November 2022, was the one exception among the five, slipping 4.9 percent from 2,195 to 2,088, and Fishergate-Corporation Street fell from 2,003 to 1,504. Church Street in Burnley went from 85 notices to 1,085, and two New Hall Lane locations, at Adelaide Street (146) and Mercer Street (64), appear in the 2025-26 table and not in the 2024-25 one. Across the whole parking service, bus lane notices made up 52.8 percent of the 123,371 notices issued in 2025-26, down from 59.3 percent of 154,053 the year before.

What the notice costs and where the money goes

Of the 65,098 bus lane notices, 55,161 have been paid. The council recorded 50,606 payments at the discount rate, which is 91.7 percent of everything paid. At £35 each, those discounted payments would come to £1,771,210. Another 1,614 notices were paid at the full £70, which would be £112,980. A further 2,941 payments fall under the council’s “other” heading, and 5,287 notices remain open. The council uses enforcement agents to recover unpaid notices and names CDER Group and Jacobs as the two it works with.

The council cancelled 4,650 notices, a cancellation rate of 7 percent, or about one in 14. The 2024-25 rate was 8 percent, with 7,052 cancelled. Other councils publish the same kind of dataset, and the cancellation rate varies by area, as the numbers on Sheffield’s bus lane fines show.

The money goes into the wider parking account. Lancashire Parking Services took £5,995,266 in income in 2025-26, spent £3,440,667 and finished with a surplus of £2,386,794. The Road Traffic Regulation Act limits what parking income can fund (section 55). A surplus is not ring fenced for parking: it joins the county highway budget, which pays for road maintenance and safety schemes.

How to avoid a bus gate notice, or challenge one

Read the signs. The council’s enforcement list says it tries to keep the page up to date and tells drivers to check the signs for the restrictions in force. That list names 19 bus lane and bus gate sites, while the 2025-26 report counts notices at 21 locations, so the signs are a safer guide than the list. At the Corporation Street gates, the council’s launch announcement said buses, Hackney carriages and bicycles can use the section between Marsh Lane and Heatley Street, 24 hours a day, and private-hire taxis cannot.

If a notice arrives, decide quickly, and read up on how parking fine appeals work before you write. The 35 pound rate applies for 21 days from service. A driver who accepts the contravention should pay inside that window, as 50,606 did. A driver who wants to contest it can submit a written representation online or write to Lancashire Parking Services, PO Box 1023, Preston, PR1 3ZA. The council takes no representations in person or by phone, aims to answer within 20 days and holds the case until it does.

Keepers who lend their car should note the liability point: the notice goes to the owner, so a friend or relative who drives through a gate leaves the owner holding the bill and the paperwork. An accepted challenge costs nothing. A rejected one brings a letter explaining how to pay or how to appeal to the independent Traffic Penalty Tribunal, and the council warns that the 50 percent reduction can be lost if the challenge fails or arrives too late. Drivers who take a case to the tribunal sometimes win it unopposed, a pattern covered in our report on Traffic Penalty Tribunal wins.

Moving traffic enforcement adds a second camera risk. Lancashire switched on its first phase in early 2026, covering banned turns, U-turns, wrong-way driving on one-way streets, yellow box junctions and zones closed to motor vehicles. Speeding is excluded and stays with the police. The report says warning notices go to first offences in the first six months of operation, and it records the results at four sites. Charnley Street in Preston, a one-way restriction, produced 2,528 warnings and 222 notices. The banned right turn on Hyndburn Road in Accrington produced 2,557 warnings and 127 notices. Morecambe Road in Lancaster recorded 131 warnings and 2 notices, and Ringway West and East in Preston 245 warnings and 6 notices. The sources do not give a moving traffic penalty amount or say when each site’s warning period ends, so treat every camera junction as live and follow the signs.

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Sources

• Lancashire County Council: Lancashire Parking Services Annual Civil Enforcement Report 2025-2026
• Lancashire County Council: Lancashire Parking Services Annual Civil Enforcement Report 2024-2025
• Lancashire County Council News: New Corporation Street bus gate in Preston city centre is about to start
• Lancashire County Council: Bus lane, pay or challenge your penalty charge notice

Reviewed by Preetam Gadekar