How Brent Council Issued 73,000 School Street Fines in Just One Year

Drivers in the north London borough of Brent were fined 73,018 times for breaching School Street restrictions in a single year, a rate of 384 penalty notices for every school day, according to figures obtained from the council. If every fine had been paid in full, the total would have topped £11.6 million, and the scale of the enforcement is now being questioned by a councillor who says some of the signage could be catching out drivers who never intended to break the rules.

How Brent’s School Streets Scheme Works

School Streets close one or more roads outside a school to most through traffic at drop off and pick up times, typically 8am to 9am and 2:30pm to 4pm on school days in term time. The aim is to cut congestion and pollution directly outside school gates and reduce the risk to children walking, scooting or cycling in. Brent Council enforces the closures using fixed CCTV cameras and mobile enforcement teams rather than manual barriers, and unauthorised vehicles caught driving through face a fine of £160, reduced to £80 if paid within 14 days.

Between April 2025 and March 2026, the council issued 73,018 Penalty Charge Notices across streets serving 33 of its schools. Applying the reduced and full payment rates, the council’s own enforcement of School Streets in that period generated somewhere between £5.8 million and £11.6 million, depending how many drivers paid within the reduced payment window, before accounting for notices that go unpaid altogether.

The Streets Catching the Most Drivers

The figures are heavily concentrated around a handful of locations. The four streets outside Preston Manor School, first designated a School Street in November 2024, produced 12,250 fines in the 12 months to March, more than any other site in the borough. Those restrictions apply to Carlton Avenue East, Princess Avenue, Bowling Green Court and Elmstead Avenue, and drivers without a permit or exemption are barred from entering between 8am and 9am and 2:30pm and 4pm on school days. When the scheme launched, the school itself acknowledged the zone might “take a little time to adapt to” but argued it would have “an immediate positive impact” on children’s safety.

Streets around John Keble C of E, Maple Walk and St Claudine’s in Harlesden produced 12,171 fines over the same period, and roads near Kingsbury Green and St Robert Southwell in Kingsbury generated 8,337. Together, those three clusters account for roughly 45 percent of every School Street fine issued across the borough in a year, a concentration that is likely to fuel the argument that a small number of poorly understood junctions, rather than widespread deliberate rule breaking, are driving the overall total.

A Councillor Asks Whether Signage Is the Problem

Conservative councillor Michael Maurice raised the figures at Brent’s Full Council meeting on 6 July, describing the number of fines as “significant” and asking the council what review it has carried out of signage at the affected sites. He requested a full breakdown of the figures to establish whether motorists are being caught out by “inadequate signage or poor scheme design” rather than deliberately ignoring the restrictions, and asked what impact the scheme has had on child safety and pollution, so residents are not left with the impression the cameras are “serving as revenue generating measures.”

Cllr Promise Knight, Brent’s Cabinet Member for Cleaner Streets and Transport, said the council was committed to ensuring School Streets “operate fairly, lawfully, and effectively” and that all signage in the borough “is compliant” with national legal requirements. She pointed to a borough-wide signage review carried out in 2023, after which the council installed advance warning signs on the approach to restrictions, signs that are not themselves a legal requirement, and a further review in 2024 that added more advance warning signage as funding allowed. Every School Street scheme now includes advance warning signage on the approach to every entry point, with two entry signs provided wherever site conditions allow, according to the council. Knight said the high fine numbers could reflect factors including traffic volumes and a street’s position relative to other busy roads, rather than confusion over the rules.

What Brent’s Own Review Found

The council has separately completed a review of 22 School Street schemes across the borough, examining road safety, travel behaviour, air quality and feedback from residents and schools. It found child casualty numbers remained “very low” and there were “no sustained increases” in road traffic casualties around most schools, with several sites recording reductions in overall casualties. The review also reported a shift in travel behaviour, with reduced car travel and higher rates of walking, cycling, scooting and public transport use, alongside falling annual nitrogen dioxide readings that the council links to reduced vehicle emissions and improving local air quality. Knight said School Streets have been “well supported by residents and the school community” and appear effective in reducing traffic related risks around schools while improving air quality.

Brent is not unusual in running a large School Streets programme. Transport for London has backed the rollout of hundreds of School Streets across the capital’s 32 boroughs over the past five years, funded partly through the Mayor’s Healthy Streets programme, and several other boroughs, including Hackney, Islington and Waltham Forest, have published their own enforcement figures showing six figure fine totals from individual schemes. What sets Brent’s figures apart is less the existence of high fine numbers and more the scale concentrated at three specific clusters, which is why Maurice’s request for a site by site breakdown, rather than a borough wide total, is likely to shape how the council responds.

What Drivers in Brent (and Beyond) Should Do

School Streets are not unique to Brent. Dozens of London boroughs and a growing number of councils elsewhere in England run similar schemes, and the enforcement model, fixed cameras plus mobile patrols rather than physical road closures, is becoming the default. Drivers who live near a school, or regularly drop off or collect children outside their own catchment area, should check whether the school sits inside a School Street zone and what times the restriction applies: the closure typically only runs for 90 minutes at each end of the school day rather than all day, so a road that looks open for most of a visit can still carry an enforceable restriction at exactly the time a parent is most likely to be driving through it.

Anyone who holds a valid permit or exemption, for example for a Blue Badge, a resident’s parking need, or a business address inside the zone, should confirm it is correctly registered with the council before relying on it. A valid exemption that has not been logged against a number plate will not stop a camera issuing a ticket automatically. Drivers who believe they held a valid exemption when they were fined, or who believe signage at a specific location was unclear, can challenge a Penalty Charge Notice through the council’s formal appeal process and, if unsuccessful, escalate to London Tribunals, the independent body that adjudicates parking and traffic appeals across the capital. Evidence such as dated photographs of the signage as seen from a driver’s seat, and any documentation confirming an exemption was registered before the date of the alleged offence, is most persuasive at that stage.

Brent runs School Streets outside 33 of its schools, out of more than 90 primary and secondary schools across the borough, so the scheme currently reaches roughly a third of local schools rather than every one. Parents whose children attend a school not currently covered should not assume the roads around it are exempt from other traffic restrictions: ordinary yellow lines, resident parking bays and standard moving traffic rules still apply outside School Street zones. Cllr Maurice’s request for a breakdown by site is expected to come back to the council later this year, and any changes to signage or enforcement at the worst affected locations would likely follow from that review rather than from this month’s Full Council meeting alone.

Sources:

• Harrow Online: Brent issues more than 73,000 School Street fines in just one year
• London Tribunals: parking and traffic appeals