Edinburgh Council Issued 40,945 LEZ Fines and Cancelled 2,773 After Driver Challenges

• Edinburgh issued 40,945 Low Emission Zone penalty charge notices in the first ten months of enforcement, from June 2024 to March 2025, and took £1,050,780 in gross income.
• Drivers challenged 3,074 notices and the council cancelled 2,773 of them, with Blue Badge holders and out of date DVLA records the two biggest reasons.
• Of 101 tribunal appeals, the council did not contest 47, and about a third of non-compliant vehicles could not be fined at all.

Edinburgh Cancelled 2,773 Low Emission Zone Fines After Drivers Fought Back

The City of Edinburgh Council has published the first full annual report on its Low Emission Zone, and the numbers show a scheme that raised more than £1 million in fines while cancelling nearly nine in ten of the notices drivers challenged. The report, titled the Low Emission Zone Annual Report and covering June 2024 to March 2025, is the council’s own account of how the zone performed once enforcement began.

Enforcement started on 1 June 2024, after a 24 month grace period that began when the zone started on 1 June 2022. In the ten months to the end of March 2025, the council issued 40,945 penalty charge notices. The report sets out that the zone is run under section 29 of the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019, which is the power the council uses to charge drivers whose vehicles do not meet the emission standard.

The number most drivers will want to know is the challenge rate. The council received 3,074 challenges to notices and cancelled 2,773 of them. That is 90 percent of the challenges received. The report lists the two largest reasons for cancellation: 28 percent of cancellations were Blue Badge holders who had not registered for the exemption, and 23 percent were vehicles that met the standard but carried out of date or inaccurate details on the DVLA record.

Put another way, roughly 780 of the cancelled notices came down to a Blue Badge not being registered and roughly 640 to a wrong DVLA record, going by the report’s percentages of 2,773 cancellations. Those are the report’s shares applied to the cancelled total, so treat them as a guide, not an exact count.

Neither of those reasons means the driver did something wrong in the sense of driving a dirty vehicle. In the first case the driver held an exemption but had not told the council. In the second, the DVLA record did not match the car. Both are paperwork failures that cost drivers a penalty notice, and in some cases a letter, before the council cancelled it.

What the Report Says About Who Gets Fined

The zone is busy. The report shows between 623,372 and 785,058 vehicles entering each month, with the lowest month in October 2024 and the highest in March 2025. Across the period, an average of 94 percent of vehicles were compliant, 4 percent were exempt, 0.8 percent were non-compliant and 1.2 percent could not be identified owing to DVLA inaccuracies, foreign vehicles or misread plates.

Cars took the brunt. Of 52,058 cases of non-compliant vehicles recorded by category, 40,208 were cars, or 77 percent. Vans made up 10,853 cases, or 21 percent, and heavy goods vehicles just 485. Coaches, buses, minibuses and motorcycles were each well under 1 percent. For a private motorist driving into Edinburgh in an older petrol or diesel car, the zone is the main way the council collects money from this scheme.

The notices are tiered by repeat offences. Of the 40,945 issued, 34,756 were first contraventions. A further 3,374 were second, 1,129 were third and 546 were fourth, while 1,140 reached a fifth contravention or more. The report also records that 62.4 percent of notices were paid at the discounted rate, and that 70 percent were paid at some stage of the process, from the discount period through to debt recovery.

The monthly pattern shows drivers adapting. Notices peaked at 6,039 in June 2024, the first month of enforcement, and fell to 2,496 by January 2025 before edging up to 2,851 in March 2025. The council’s separate parking income page lists 36,904 notices for 2025-26, a fall of about 10 percent on the 40,945 listed for 2024-25, which points the same way.

The Number Behind the Fines: £1,050,780 in Gross Income

The report puts gross income from fines and penalties at £1,050,780 for the year ending 31 March 2025. Revenue costs of running the zone were £552,789. After grant-funded costs of £295,196 are taken off, the report gives net allocatable revenue of £793,187. It states that any surplus is ring-fenced for the objectives of the Low Emission Zone.

The council’s parking income page gives slightly different totals for the same year: 40,945 notices and £1,072,862 in income for 2024-25, then £1,225,658.04 from 36,904 notices in 2025-26. The two documents measure income in different ways, so the figures do not match exactly, but both put the zone at a little over £1 million a year in fines.

Lifetime costs of the scheme from 2018-19 to 2024-25 were £2,946,436, most of it grant funded. The report also flags a risk to the council’s own income: it cites a potential loss of more than £800,000 from incorrect DVLA keeper details, where the council cannot send a notice to the right person.

That last point cuts both ways. A third of the problem cases never reach a driver at all. The report says 66.5 percent of non-compliant, non-exempt vehicles were issued a notice, and the other 33.5 percent could not be: there was no DVLA record, the record was wrong, or the vehicle was later found to be exempt.

Tribunal Appeals Where the Council Did Not Turn Up

Drivers who lose a challenge can appeal to an adjudicator. The report records 101 tribunal appeals. In 47 of them the council chose not to contest the case. Another 20 appeals were allowed by the adjudicator and 20 were lodged but not yet heard. Only 14 were rejected, with 9 of those drivers paying in full and 5 paying at the discounted rate.

The report says the not-contested cases were high early on, with signage problems the stated cause, and have dropped to almost nil. That detail is worth noting for any driver holding an old notice: the first months of enforcement produced the weakest cases for the council.

For notices that were not paid or cancelled, the council has moved to recovery. At the time of writing there were 12,933 live cases, of which 3,231 were still within the payment window and 9,702 were with Sheriff Officers, who were first sent cases in spring 2025.

What Drivers Entering Edinburgh Should Do

Check the vehicle before the trip. The zone applies 24 hours a day with no suspensions, and the report confirms there were no scheme changes in the period. A car that meets the standard can still be fined if the DVLA record is wrong, so a driver should check the make, model and fuel type on their vehicle record on GOV.UK and correct any mistake.

Blue Badge holders should confirm that their exemption is registered with the council in advance, not after a notice arrives. The report’s top cancellation reason was exactly that: holders who were exempt but unregistered. A registered exemption removes the problem at source.

If a notice does arrive, challenge it in writing within the payment window and keep the evidence, such as the vehicle record, a Blue Badge or a photograph of signage. With 90 percent of challenges leading to cancellation in this report, and the council declining to contest nearly half of tribunal appeals, a well documented challenge has a good record in Edinburgh. A driver who intends to pay should do so within the discount window. In this report 62.4 percent of notices were settled at the lower rate, and the saving is real money on every notice.

The council also points out that one enforcement tool is still waiting. The report says a mobile enforcement vehicle has received VCA certification but was awaiting Transport Scotland approval at the time of writing, which would widen the places a camera can catch a vehicle.

Readers can find related coverage on More Than Half of Glasgow’s Clean Air Zone Fines Are Overturned on Appeal and Aberdeen’s Low Emission Zone Fined Drivers Almost £4 Million in a Single Year.

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Sources:

• The City of Edinburgh Council: Low Emission Zone Annual Report (LEZAR)
• The City of Edinburgh Council: Parking income