Birmingham Bus Lane Fines — PCNs, Income & Appeals

Birmingham issued 611,024 bus lane PCNs over the five years — more than any other authority in this dataset — and took £20.5m gross, £14.6m of it net of operating costs. The pattern is driven almost entirely by the city centre bus gates: Moor Street Queensway southbound towards Digbeth alone accounts for 193,721 PCNs, and Sheepcote Street took 48,284 in 2021/22 before falling to zero in 2025/26. The 2024/25 rise, from 82,918 PCNs to 135,988, is the Moor Street Queensway northbound camera returning after a two-year gap and the five new Broad Street gates starting in January 2025 — Broad Street at Berkley Street outbound issued 29,216 PCNs in its first full year. Appeals are worth noting on their own: in 2021/22 the tribunal allowed 742 of 858 appeals against the council, a rate that has fallen every year since to 174 allowed against 285 dismissed in 2025/26.

Which cameras issue the most fines

Camera-enforced bus lane locations ranked by PCNs issued in 2025/26. The last column is the 5-year total.

Birmingham enforces 31 camera sites — bus lanes, bus gates and bus-only roads — and gave the date enforcement began at each, from September 2013 in the city centre to January 2025 on Broad Street and Hagley Road. The PCN table names 32 sites: it also carries a Priory Queensway southbound-towards-Old-Square camera that is absent from the council's own location list and has issued almost nothing (23 PCNs in 2021/22, none since 2023/24). One row, Broad Street at Bridge Street inbound, is a tram-only gate rather than a bus gate; it is kept here because the council counts it in the same dataset. Twenty rows link to a lane page. The rest do not, because Birmingham describes its cameras by direction and landmark ("Tyburn Road towards Bagot Arms (outbound)") while its bus lane directory, which our pages come from, describes the same roads as lettered segments between side streets — matching those by hand would mean guessing which of eight Tyburn Road segments a camera sits on, so they are left unlinked rather than linked wrongly.

Challenges & appeals — do they work?

Formal representations to the council, and appeals to the independent Traffic Penalty Tribunal. Drivers made 5,083 formal challenges over 4 years.

The council's own figures show the share of challenges upheld went from 31% in 2022/23 to 39% in 2025/26 — so a well-grounded challenge is worth making. See our guide to appealing a bus lane PCN for the grounds that win.