Cheshire West and Chester Bus Lane Fines — Chester
How many bus lane Penalty Charge Notices Cheshire West and Chester Council issues across Chester, from which cameras — from data released under Freedom of Information (ref RFI 011892).
31,577
PCNs issued in 5 years2021/22–2025/26
3,974
PCNs in 2025/26across 7 cameras
This page reports data released by Cheshire West and Chester Council under the Freedom of Information Act (RFI 011892, responded 2026-08-26). Figures are the council's own. BusLaneCheck is independent and not affiliated with the council. Compare every UK authority →
Bus lane PCNs issued per year
All five of the bus lanes Cheshire West and Chester enforces are in Chester itself. Seven cameras on those five roads issued 31,577 penalties in the five years to March 2026, and the council says it took £1,108,296.58 for them. Enforcement has fallen in every year since 2022/23 — 7,963 penalties that year against 3,974 in 2025/26, roughly half — and most of the decline is one road. Hough Green is the busiest site on the list and the one that has dropped furthest, from 3,006 penalties in 2022/23 to 982 in 2025/26. Upper Northgate Street has fallen steadily on the same path, from 2,536 in the first year to 1,161 in the last. Sealand Road is the only camera to switch on during the period, in May 2022, and the only one whose numbers have held roughly level since.
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.
Seven cameras across five roads, grouped here so each row matches a road on this site. Hough Green and Wrexham Road carry two cameras each, one at the start of the lane and one at the end; the start-of-lane cameras only begin issuing penalties in September 2023, so the earlier years on those two rows are the end camera alone. The council now calls the bus gate at the interchange the Chester Bus Exchange, having called it the Chester Bus Interchange when it listed its cameras a week earlier — same site, renamed. Two oddities in the council's own figures are left in rather than tidied away. An eighth camera code appears against Upper Northgate Street, separate from the one on the council's camera list, and issued three penalties in five years — one in April 2023, one in November 2024, one in May 2025; those three are folded into the Upper Northgate Street row. More significantly, the data simply stops for two of the five roads: there is no entry for the Chester Bus Exchange or for either Hough Green camera after December 2025, while the other three roads run on to March 2026. The council did not explain the gap and we cannot tell from the figures whether enforcement ended at those sites or the records are incomplete, so the 2025/26 column covers nine months for those two roads and twelve for the rest, and the year total of 3,974 is short by whatever they would have issued in the first quarter of 2026.
Challenges & appeals — do they work?
Cheshire West and Chester says it cannot report on challenges at all. Producing the numbers would mean opening more than 30,000 individual penalty records by hand — 269 hours and £6,725 of staff time on the council's own estimate — so the request was refused on cost grounds under section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act. There is therefore no way to say how many Chester drivers object to a bus lane penalty, or how often the council backs down when they do. The council did offer to answer for a shorter period than the five years asked for. See our guide to appealing a bus lane PCN for the grounds that win.
The fine itself
A bus lane PCN from Cheshire West and Chester Council is £70, reduced to £35 if paid within 21 days. It is a civil penalty — there are no licence points. £70, halved to £35 if paid within 21 days. The council's own bus lane guidance page says 14 days in two places; asked about it under Freedom of Information the council confirmed 21 days is correct and that the page is wrong.
What the council does not hold or publish
What the cameras raise. The council gave its bus lane income as a single figure for the whole five years — £1,108,296.58 — and would not break it down by year, so there is no income chart on this page. The total is worth stating even so, because it is the only figure of its kind Cheshire West has published: 31,577 penalties for £1,108,296.58 is an average of £35.10 each, against a charge of £70 halved to £35 for prompt payment. That is close to what you would expect if most drivers pay at the discount and a minority never pay at all, and it sits comfortably inside the £2,210,390 the same penalties could have raised at the full rate.
Penalties paid at the discounted rate. The council answered the question "how many penalties were paid at the discounted rate" with "£23,184" — a pound sign in front of what was asked for as a count. Read as a count it makes sense: 23,184 of the 31,577 penalties is 73% paid at the discount, and 23,184 payments of £35 comes to £811,440, leaving £296,857 of the reported income to come from the remaining 8,393 penalties. Read as an amount of money it makes none, since it would be 2% of the income the council reported in the same letter. We take it as a count of 23,184 and flag the pound sign rather than quietly correcting it. Like the income figure it is a five-year total with no yearly split, so it is not charted.
Challenges and appeals. Refused. Asked how many drivers challenged a penalty and how many challenges succeeded, the council said the answer is not held in any reportable form: producing it would mean opening more than 30,000 individual penalty records by hand, which it estimated at 269 hours and £6,725 of staff time, above the £450 limit in section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act. It offered to answer for a shorter period instead. Nothing on this page therefore says how often Cheshire West backs down when challenged.
Operating costs. Not supplied. The income figure above is gross, so it is what the cameras took, not what the enforcement operation cleared after running costs.
The bus lanes behind these cameras
Each of these locations has a full page with operating hours, permitted vehicles and the governing traffic order: