Croydon Made £7.2 Million From LTNs a Judge Ruled Existed Just to Raise Money

A judge found the real reason the cameras stayed on

Croydon Council collected £7,210,328.18 in penalty charge notices from six Low Traffic Neighbourhood schemes between March 2024 and their removal in March 2026, an average of more than £300,000 a month. In April 2024 alone, the cameras generated over £480,000. The council always defended the schemes on road safety and environmental grounds. The High Court found otherwise.

Handing down his ruling, Mr Justice Pepperall said he was “satisfied on the balance of probabilities that the dominant purpose for these orders making the schemes permanent was the need to safeguard the revenue raised by enforcement,” adding that “such purpose was unlawful,” and on that basis quashed the orders that had made the schemes permanent. The judge pointed directly to public comments made by Croydon’s mayor, Jason Perry, both before and after the vote to make the schemes permanent, in which Perry described his hands as tied by the council’s budget. Perry had campaigned in opposition on a promise to remove the LTNs if elected, then kept them running once in office.

Who paid, and how many are getting it back

Between 30 March 2024 and 4 March 2026, Croydon issued 45,000 penalty charge notices under the six schemes, at fines of up to £160 each. Three months after the High Court ordered the schemes removed, the council had processed refunds for just 4,182 of those drivers, fewer than one in ten. According to Conrad Hall, Croydon’s finance director, the total cost of refunds is expected to reach around £7.5 million, once interest and administration are added to the original take. Removing the cameras is also forecast to cost the council between £2.5 million and £3 million in lost income over the coming year, a total financial hole of roughly £10 million.

A Freedom of Information request submitted to the council found that, as of 20 June 2026, Croydon had received 5,624 refund applications and approved 4,182 of them, paying out £360,962 against total fines collected of £7.2 million. At that rate of repayment, a source close to the council’s scrutiny process estimated it could take up to five years to return the full amount unlawfully taken from drivers.

The council has not made it easy to claim

Croydon holds contact details for all 45,000 drivers who were fined, but has not proactively written to them about the possibility of a refund. Instead, the claim form sits several clicks deep on the council’s website, with no dedicated phone line, no fines hotline, and no clearly published email address for refund queries. At a council scrutiny meeting in April 2026, Hall confirmed that no additional staff had been assigned to process the thousands of refund requests expected once the ruling became public.

The front page of Croydon’s website carries prominent links to pay council tax or pay a parking fine, but nothing directing residents to the LTN refund page. Readers who have gone through the process have reported waiting weeks, and in some cases months, for their money after submitting a claim.

Croydon is not the only council playing for time

A similar pattern emerged in Lambeth, where the West Dulwich Low Traffic Neighbourhood was quashed by the High Court after a judge ruled the council had failed to properly consult residents before installing it. Lambeth required drivers to apply individually for refunds rather than repaying them automatically from its own records, a process that left less than 10 per cent of an estimated £1.5 million in fines repaid six months after the council lost its case. Both councils generated substantial sums from schemes later found unlawful, and both placed the burden of claiming the money back onto the drivers who paid it, rather than repaying automatically from records the councils already hold.

What the refund actually covers

The refund only applies to fines issued on six named schemes: Albert Road, Dalmally Road, Elmers Road, Holmesdale Road, Parsons Mead and Sutherland Road, and only for penalty charge notices issued between 30 March 2024 and 4 March 2026, the window in which the schemes had been made permanent. Fines issued before March 2024, while the same roads operated as trial low-traffic schemes, are not covered. The High Court ruling related specifically to the decision to make the schemes permanent, not to the earlier trial period.

Why the injustice runs deeper than one borough

Low Traffic Neighbourhoods are supposed to derive their legal authority from road safety and environmental objectives set out in the Traffic Management Act. A council that instead runs a scheme to protect a revenue line in its budget is acting outside the powers Parliament gave it, which is precisely the finding Mr Justice Pepperall reached. That distinction is the whole case for every driver who paid a fine believing it was justified by a genuine road safety measure, only to learn years later that a judge concluded the opposite. It is the difference between a lawful penalty and money a council was never entitled to collect in the first place.

The financial arithmetic makes the point starkly. Croydon’s own finance director has put a figure on the total cost of the affair at roughly £10 million, once refunds, interest, administration and lost future income from the scrapped cameras are added together. That is a sum the borough now has to find from a budget that, according to the judge’s own findings, was already under enough pressure that the mayor felt unable to remove an unlawful scheme once it was in place. Residents who never drove through any of the six roads are left picking up the resulting shortfall through council services, while the drivers who were fined wait years for money that was never lawfully taken from them in the first place.

How to fight back and claim your refund

• Check if you were fined between March 2024 and March 2026. If you received a penalty charge notice for driving through Albert Road, Dalmally Road, Elmers Road, Holmesdale Road, Parsons Mead or Sutherland Road within that window, you are entitled to a refund.
• Use the council’s refund form directly rather than searching the main website, as there is no prominent link from the homepage. Croydon Council’s parking department can supply the request form on request, and it is also reachable through the council’s parking pages.
• Keep a copy of your original penalty charge notice or your bank statement showing the payment, as evidence to support a claim if the council’s own records are incomplete or delayed.
• Chase in writing, not just by phone. A written complaint creates a paper trail that can be escalated to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman if the council fails to respond within a reasonable period.
• Escalate a slow refund. If your claim has been outstanding for more than eight weeks with no update, you can complain formally to the council and, if that fails, refer the matter to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, which can investigate maladministration in how councils handle refunds.

Croydon has declared effective bankruptcy on three occasions in the years it has run the low-traffic schemes, from a 2020 trial onward. The council now owes drivers money it took unlawfully, has been ordered to pay legal costs to the residents’ group that brought the case, and is refunding claims at a pace that, on current figures, will still be running years from now. Every driver fined on one of the six roads within the two-year window is owed money the council is legally required to return, whether or not it chooses to make that easy to find out. Checking whether you are one of them takes a few minutes; getting the money back, on Croydon’s current record, could take a great deal longer.

Sources:

• Inside Croydon: Perry’s go-slow council could take 5 years to pay LTN refunds
• Inside Croydon: High Court judge orders end to Croydon’s unlawful LTNs
• LBC: London council made £7 million from six LTNs later ruled unlawful
• Motoring Chronicle: Councils never contested most of the parking tickets they lost on appeal