How many bus lane Penalty Charge Notices Cambridgeshire County Council issues across Cambridge, from which cameras, how much it raises — from data released under Freedom of Information (ref FOI202607009553).
193,550
PCNs issued in 5 years2021/22–2025/26
£5.48m
gross income, 5 yearsnet of costs not held
46,221
PCNs in 2025/26across 14 cameras
62%
paid at the £35 discount2025/26
This page reports data released by Cambridgeshire County Council under the Freedom of Information Act (FOI202607009553, responded 2026-08-10). Figures are the council's own. BusLaneCheck is independent and not affiliated with the council. Compare every UK authority →
Bus lane PCNs issued per yearGross PCN income per year
Cambridgeshire issued 193,550 bus lane and bus gate penalties over the five years and took £5.48 million. The first year is the odd one: 7,604 penalties in 2021/22 against 48,531 the year after. The monthly figures show why — enforcement was still climbing through that year, from 721 penalties in April 2021 to 2,143 in March 2022 — and only 17% of those penalties were paid at the discounted rate, against 56% to 69% in every year since. Silver Street is the single most-ticketed place in Cambridge, with 47,129 penalties across the five years, followed by Bridge Street on 37,586 and Emmanuel Road on 35,003. The sharpest recent change is Mill Road, which went from no penalties at all in 2022/23 and 2023/24 to 12,368 in 2025/26, making it the busiest camera in the city in its first full year back. Newmarket Road, by contrast, is the quietest pair on the list: the inbound camera has issued 3,356 penalties in five years, fewer than Silver Street issues in a normal month. Two caveats about the numbers as supplied. June 2025 records just 718 penalties across every camera in the city, against roughly 5,000 to 6,500 in the months either side — a drop of that size at every location at once looks like a gap in the council's data rather than a quiet month, so the 2025/26 total is more likely to be understated than overstated. And the council's own cost estimate elsewhere in the response refers to 147,329 penalties, which is exactly the 2021/22 to 2024/25 total, suggesting that figure was worked out before the 2025/26 year was added.
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.
Cambridgeshire runs 14 cameras across nine enforcement points, and most of the city's restrictions are watched in both directions — Silver Street, Bridge Street, Emmanuel Road, Station Road and Mill Road each have an inbound and an outbound camera, whose figures are added together above. Two roads the council names as camera-enforced bus lanes on its own website, Elizabeth Way and Hills Road, appear in neither the penalty table nor the camera list it supplied, so they have no row here; the council did not explain the omission, and it is not safe to read it as meaning those lanes are unwatched. Mill Road is the awkward one: the council listed it twice, as a restriction that began in August 2020 and again as one that began in March 2025, with warning notices from 3 February 2025. That matches its figures, which show tickets in 2021/22, nothing at all in the two years after, and then the busiest camera in the city from 2024/25 — the bus gate was taken out and put back. The date shown is the original 2020 start. Station Road tells a smaller version of the same story: an outbound camera joined the inbound one in July 2018, and the pair went from 1,177 penalties in 2023/24 to 10,834 the year after.
The fine itself
A bus lane PCN from Cambridgeshire County Council is £70, reduced to £35 if paid within 21 days. It is a civil penalty — there are no licence points. The council publishes all three figures on its own bus lane and bus gate enforcement page: £70, halved to £35 if paid within 21 days, rising to £105 if it is still unpaid after 28 days.
What the council does not hold or publish
Challenges and appeals. The council would not say how many drivers formally challenged a penalty, or how many of those challenges it accepted or rejected. Working it out, it said, would mean reviewing all 147,329 penalty charge notices by hand — about 4,911 staff hours — so it declined on cost grounds. What it did release were the outcomes of cases that reached the independent Traffic Penalty Tribunal: across the five years 1,242 appeals were dismissed and 55 allowed, with a further 252 penalties cancelled by the council before the hearing, 98 settled by consent order and 105 withdrawn. Those are tribunal cases only, and the tribunal is the last step — the great majority of challenges never get that far and are not counted anywhere here.
Money and challenges by location. Only the penalty counts are broken down by camera. Income, discounted payments and appeal outcomes were all supplied for the county as a whole, so there is no figure for how much any single Cambridge bus lane or bus gate raises.
How the income was counted. The council warns that these income figures are not the same as the Bus Lane and Bus Gate Account figures in its published Annual Parking Report, because the two are compiled on different bases — one counts money when it is paid, the other when the penalty is issued — and it asks that the two not be treated as comparable. It also notes that every figure here is a snapshot: penalties that are still unpaid or under appeal can change the totals later.
The rest of Cambridgeshire. The response covers Cambridge City and South Cambridgeshire only. In practice that is the whole picture for bus lane enforcement in the county — every camera-enforced bus lane and bus gate the council operates is in Cambridge itself — but no figures were supplied for East Cambridgeshire, Fenland or Huntingdonshire. Peterborough is a separate council and is not covered at all.
The bus lanes behind these cameras
Each of these locations has a full page with operating hours, permitted vehicles and the governing traffic order: