Councils Fined More Than 57,000 Drivers for Blocking EV Charging Bays Last Year

More than 161,000 drivers have been fined for parking in an electric vehicle charging bay without plugging in from 2020 onward, and the pace of enforcement is climbing fast. Councils issued 57,000 of those penalties in 2025 alone, nearly triple the number handed out just three years earlier, according to Freedom of Information data submitted to 218 local authorities.

The practice has a name in the trade: ICEing, short for a petrol or diesel car (running an internal combustion engine) blocking a bay reserved for an electric car. Each fine costs £70 in England and Wales. But the FOI data shows something the headline figure hides: enforcement is wildly uneven from one council to the next, so two drivers doing exactly the same thing can face a completely different outcome depending on their postcode.

The Numbers Behind the Crackdown

The year-by-year totals show how fast this has grown. Councils issued 8,642 fines in 2020. That rose to 13,588 in 2021, 22,251 in 2022, 32,368 in 2023 and 46,128 in 2024, before reaching 57,000 in 2025. On a monthly basis, councils handed out an average of 4,791 penalties in 2025, up from 3,844 the year before, a rise of 24.6 percent over twelve months.

Newcastle upon Tyne tops the enforcement table with 19,404 fines issued, ahead of Coventry on 15,261 and Westminster on 13,511. Six of the ten most active councils sit in London. Hammersmith & Fulham has issued 5,366 penalties, Camden 5,301 and Ealing 5,200 over the past five years. At the level of individual charging bays, Millharbour on the Isle of Dogs in Tower Hamlets has racked up 664 fines, the highest total for any single site in the country.

Why Some Drivers Are Fined and Others Never Are

The uneven enforcement comes down to a legal technicality most drivers have never heard of. A council can only issue fines for misusing an EV bay if it has put in place a Traffic Regulation Order covering that specific charging site. Many authorities have never done this. Some have told researchers they hold no data on the issue at all and run no enforcement programme whatsoever.

West Lothian Council confirmed it currently has no enforcement programme running for its EV bays, though officers are working on Traffic Regulation Orders for existing sites. That admission captures the wider pattern: a driver blocking a charging bay in Westminster faces a near certain fine, while the same behaviour in an area without a Traffic Regulation Order carries no consequence at all.

Signage adds another layer of unfairness. Drivers report faded markings and poorly placed signs, especially at older charging sites installed before current standards were introduced. A fine for parking in a bay you could not reasonably identify as EV-only is exactly the kind of case that can be challenged, and often successfully.

The gap between councils that enforce and councils that do not is not a small technical detail. It decides whether a driver ends up with a £70 penalty on their record or nothing at all, for identical behaviour carried out on the same day in different parts of the country. A postcode, rather than the seriousness of the offence, is doing most of the work in deciding who pays.

How Councils Get Their Enforcement Powers

Setting up a Traffic Regulation Order is not a quick process. Councils must consult locally, publish notice of the proposed restriction, and allow a formal objection period before an order takes legal effect. That process can take months, which helps explain why so many charging sites, especially ones installed quickly to meet rising demand, still operate without any enforceable restriction years after the bay itself was painted on the ground.

Some authorities have chosen to work around the delay by relying on wider parking restrictions that already exist on a street, rather than creating an EV-specific order. Others have simply left enforcement to chance, informing drivers through signage alone with no legal mechanism to back a fine if a driver decides to challenge one.

The Squeeze on Charging Infrastructure

The rise in enforcement tracks a genuine supply problem. There are now 1.8 million electric cars on UK roads and 87,796 public charging devices, after new EV registrations reached 473,348 in 2025, pushing the electric share of new car sales to 5.3 percent. Public charging infrastructure grew 19 percent last year with 14,097 new devices added, but that growth remains concentrated in London and the South East, leaving other regions with far less capacity relative to demand.

Ealing Council’s cabinet member for climate action, Councillor Paul Driscoll, defended the strict approach, saying the authority makes “no apology” for taking firm action and that clear signage and regular patrols stop misuse that “undermines investment in greener transport.” Ben Welham, a motoring expert at car marketplace Cinch, which compiled the FOI figures, warned that inconsistent enforcement risks overwhelming charging networks in the areas that do have capacity while discouraging electric vehicle adoption elsewhere.

Electric vehicle owners are not exempt from fines either. Parking in a charging bay without connecting to the charger, or leaving a car in the bay after charging has finished, both count as violations under the rules that most councils apply. The £70 penalty applies regardless of what the car in the bay runs on.

Automated number plate recognition cameras have started replacing manual patrols at some of the busiest sites, which removes the guesswork over whether a vehicle was actually connected to a charger and not just parked in the space. The technology can distinguish a plugged-in EV from one simply occupying the bay, closing off a common defence drivers have historically used when appealing a fine: claiming they intended to charge but never got round to it.

How to Fight Back

• Before you park in any bay marked for EV charging, check the signage carefully. If the markings are faded, obscured or missing entirely, photograph them immediately if you receive a penalty charge notice, as unclear signage is one of the strongest grounds for appeal.
• If you are fined, ask the council to confirm whether a Traffic Regulation Order was in force for that specific bay on the date of the offence. Without one, the penalty might not be enforceable.
• Electric vehicle owners should always disconnect and move their car quickly once charging finishes. Overstaying in a bay after the charge completes can trigger the same £70 fine as a petrol or diesel driver blocking the space entirely.
• Check whether your council publishes a live map of enforced EV bays before you park in an unfamiliar area. Several London boroughs, including Ealing and Camden, list active enforcement zones on their websites.
• If you believe a fine was unfair, appeal directly to the issuing council within the deadline stated on the penalty notice, and escalate to the Traffic Penalty Tribunal or the London Tribunals service (for London boroughs) if the council rejects your case.
• Report a persistently blocked charging bay to your council rather than assuming enforcement will happen automatically. Several authorities, including Brighton & Hove, take reports directly through their website.
• If you drive an EV regularly and rely on a particular street or car park for charging, keep a note of dates and times when bays are blocked by non-charging vehicles. A pattern of repeated obstruction strengthens the case for a council to introduce a Traffic Regulation Order where none currently exists.

With the government still targeting an end to new petrol and diesel car sales by 2030, the pressure on charging bays is only going to build. Councils without enforcement powers now face a simple choice: put Traffic Regulation Orders in place and start penalising misuse, or watch the charging network they have invested in become clogged with cars that have no need to be there.

For drivers, the message from the data is just as clear. The rules exist for one purpose, and ignoring them is becoming a far more expensive gamble with each year that passes. As enforcement spreads to more councils and more automated number plate recognition cameras come online, the areas where ICEing currently carries no consequence are likely to shrink, not grow. A habit that costs nothing today in one borough could cost £70 tomorrow once that same council finally puts a Traffic Regulation Order in place.

Sources:

• https://dailynewsmagazine.co.uk/uk-councils-are-increasingly-fining-drivers-for-misusing-ev-bays/
• https://www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/travel-and-road-safety/electric-vehicle-ev-charging/report-blocked-ev-bay