Derby Council Issued 34,346 Moving Traffic Fines, Up 67 Percent, Costing Up to £70

• Derby City Council issued 34,346 moving traffic penalty notices in 2025/26, up 67% from 20,509 the year before.
• Bus lane notices fell 18.5% to 39,493, and total on-street notices dipped 3.5% to 126,367.
• Moving traffic charges are up to £70 each, so the 34,346 notices carry £2.4 million at the full rate and £1.2 million at the discounted rate.

Derby City Council issued 34,346 moving traffic penalty notices in 2025/26, up 67% from 20,509 in 2024/25. Moving traffic notices are the camera fines for offences such as stopping in a yellow box junction or making a banned turn, and the charge is up to £70. The numbers come from the council’s Parking Services Annual Report 2025/2026, which compares the last two financial years.

Bus lane notices went the other way, falling 18.5% from 48,443 to 39,493. Taken together, the two camera categories produced 73,839 notices in 2025/26 against 68,952 the year before, a rise of 7.1%.

Moving Traffic Notices Overtake Parking Notices

Moving traffic enforcement is now a large part of Derby’s on-street workload. The 34,346 notices make up 27% of all 126,367 on-street notices, up from 16% a year earlier (20,509 out of 130,926). Bus lane notices still make up the biggest single group at 31%.

The council’s full on-street breakdown shows the change. Higher level parking notices fell 14.9%, from 59,190 to 50,345. Lower level notices dropped from 2,462 to 1,805, and postal notices rose from 322 to 378. Total on-street notices fell 3.5%, from 130,926 to 126,367, so moving traffic is the only category growing quickly.

Off-street notices in council car parks went up. They rose 10.3% from 6,627 to 7,308, with lower level notices accounting for 7,213 of those. Combined notices across all categories came to 133,675, down 2.8% from 137,553. The combined figure is our addition of the council’s on-street and off-street totals.

The off-street rise was led by lower level notices, which went from 6,535 to 7,213, an increase of 10.4%. Higher level off-street notices stayed almost flat at 92 against 91. Postal notices in car parks rose from one to three.

The top contravention codes in the report point the same way. Code 34J fell 18.5% from 48,443 to 39,493 notices, code 01 rose 10.8% from 15,491 to 17,167, and code 52M rose 3.3% from 19,283 to 19,917. A further moving traffic code, 31J, recorded 3,005 notices after none the year before.

What £70 a Notice Adds Up To

The Traffic Penalty Tribunal says moving traffic notices carry a charge of up to £70, with 50% off for early payment. Multiplying the 34,346 Derby notices by £70 gives £2,404,220 at the full rate, or £1,202,110 at the discounted rate of £35. Those totals are our arithmetic and sit before cancellations and unpaid notices. Derby’s report does not publish income.

What the report does show is that most drivers pay. For on-street notices, 99,038 were paid in 2025/26, or 78%, up from 95,686 and 73%. Of those paid, 86,677 were paid at the discount, which is 87%, up from 81,845 and 85%. In car parks, 4,446 notices were paid, or 60%, the same share as the 4,036 paid a year earlier, and 78% of the paid notices got the discount, up from 73%.

Not every notice is paid. The report’s totals leave 27,329 on-street notices from 2025/26 without a recorded payment, compared with 35,240 for the previous year. The report does not say how many of those were cancelled and how many are still live, so the figure is the gap between notices issued and notices paid, not a count of unpaid debt.

The report refers to a 50% discount for payment within 14 days. The Tribunal’s guidance on moving traffic notices gives 21 days. The date printed on the notice is the one that counts, so check it the day the letter arrives.

How Many Drivers Challenged Their Notice

Informal and formal challenges are handled quickly, according to the council’s own response times. For informal representations received online before a notice to owner, 77% were answered in under 14 days, and for those sent by post the figure was 93%. For formal representations received online after a notice to owner, 92% were answered in under 14 days, and by post 93%.

Few cases reach the independent tribunal. The report records 37 Traffic Penalty Tribunal cases involving Derby in 2025/26, made up of 15 parking, 8 bus lane and 14 moving traffic cases. The report gives no figure for the previous year and does not say how many were allowed.

Set against 126,367 on-street notices, 37 tribunal cases is a tiny share. Most notices are paid, many at the discount, and only a handful of drivers use the final stage of appeal.

The Tribunal route is free, and an independent adjudicator decides the case, which makes it a real option for drivers who believe a camera got it wrong. The low number of Derby cases suggests that most drivers either pay or settle the matter at the council stage, where the report says replies come back within 14 days in the large majority of cases.

Parking Places Behind the Notices

The council lists its public parking spaces for 2025/26 as 1,433 on-street pay and display spaces, 399 limited waiting spaces, 4,238 residents parking zone spaces and 1,938 car park spaces. The report gives no prior year figure for those, so there is no way to say whether capacity changed.

Can You Avoid It: Checking and Challenging a Moving Traffic Notice

The first protection is to read the notice carefully. A moving traffic notice should name the offence, the date, the time and the location, and it arrives by post. Compare each detail with where the car was.

Most drivers have two stages before the tribunal. The Traffic Penalty Tribunal says that the first step is to make representations to the council that issued the notice, usually within 28 days. If those are rejected, the council sends a Notice of Rejection of Representations with a unique PIN code.

The next step is the appeal itself. The Tribunal says the appeal is submitted online, is free, and must be made within 28 days of the rejection notice. An independent adjudicator then decides the case. GOV.UK confirms the same 28 day window and says that an appeal outside London goes to the Traffic Penalty Tribunal. If the appeal succeeds, the notice is cancelled and nothing is payable.

A lost appeal has a cost. The Tribunal says that a driver who loses must pay the full amount of the notice, so the discount is gone. That makes the early payment decision important. If the facts show the notice is correct, paying within the discount window halves the cost. If the notice looks wrong, put the challenge in writing within the first 14 days and keep the evidence.

Useful evidence for a yellow box junction challenge is a dashcam clip, a photograph of the road layout and the signs, and a note of traffic conditions. For a bus lane or a banned turn, check whether the signs and road markings were visible and whether the restriction was in force at that time of day.

Do not ignore the letters. GOV.UK says a driver who neither pays nor appeals can face a late penalty, known as a charge certificate.

The Derby figures show how quickly the mix of notices can shift. Moving traffic notices grew 67% in one year while bus lane and parking notices fell, so a route that was safe to drive in 2024/25 could now be camera enforced. Check the signs on any junction you do not know.

The comparison with other years is limited, as the Derby report sets out only the two latest financial years. What it does show is direction. Notices for stopping or turning where it is banned are rising, notices for driving in bus lanes are falling, and the overall total of 133,675 sits 2.8% lower than the year before.

Drivers who use Derby’s city centre routes regularly should treat any ticket as time sensitive. With 34,346 moving traffic notices in a single year, roughly 94 a day on average, the council is sending a high volume of letters, and the discount and appeal windows start running from the date on each one. Diary the dates on the day the letter arrives.

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Sources:

• Derby City Council: Parking Services Annual Report 2025/2026
• Traffic Penalty Tribunal: English authorities commence moving traffic enforcement – Traffic Penalty Tribunal
• GOV.UK: Appeal against a penalty charge notice