How many bus lane Penalty Charge Notices City of Edinburgh Council issues, from which cameras, how much it raises — from the council's own published notice and income figures, with the camera breakdown released under freedom of information.
338,914
PCNs issued in 5 years2021/22–2025/26
£12.33m
gross income, 5 yearsnet of costs not held
64,895
PCNs in 2025/26across 24 cameras
The yearly notice counts and income on this page come from the City of Edinburgh Council's published Parking income page, which reports bus lane camera notices in a table of their own, separate from parking tickets and Low Emission Zone charges. The camera-by-camera breakdown and the enforcement start dates come from the council's freedom of information response edir:63403 of 18 August 2026. The council refused the income question in that response under section 25 of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002, on the ground that the figures were already published — and they were, which is why this page can show them. 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
Edinburgh issued 338,914 bus lane charge notices over the five years and collected £12.33m for them. Notices peaked at 80,583 in 2024/25 — the year Lanark Road, Links Place and Queensferry Road all came on stream — and fell back to 64,895 in 2025/26. Income has moved very differently from the count: it nearly doubled between 2023/24 and 2024/25, from £1.95m to £3.56m, and stayed high at £3.10m in 2025/26 even as notices dropped by a fifth. The amount collected per notice rose from £28.51 in 2021/22 to £47.72 in 2025/26, which on a £100 charge means the council now collects roughly half of what it issues, against under a third four years ago. The council has not explained what changed, and it is the single most interesting unanswered question in this dataset.
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.
Edinburgh runs about 30 bus lane cameras across 25 locations, and this is the first complete list of them to be published anywhere. The council's own bus lane page names only twelve places — its five 24-hour bus lanes and its six bus gates, plus The Shore — and promises "a map of the bus lane cameras around the city" that is not actually on the page. The rest were released only under freedom of information. Liberton Road and Calder Road are the two oldest and busiest sites, between them accounting for 68,417 charge notices; The Shore is the fastest-growing, from 1,295 notices in 2023/24 to 8,421 in 2025/26 after a southbound camera was added in May 2024. Three cameras went live in 2024 — Lanark Road and Links Place in May, Queensferry Road in October — and all three issued over 3,000 notices in their first full year. One camera has been switched off: Manse Road, which issued 9,698 notices in 2023/24 alone, was a route-for-buses camera the council turned off in October 2024, and it is excluded from the ranking below. Where a location has more than one camera the council reports them as a single figure: Calder Road has three, and Liberton Road, The Shore and South Gyle Broadway two each. A separate “Manse Road” camera issued 9,698 PCNs in 2021/22 and does not appear in later years.
Challenges & appeals — do they work?
The council does not publish how many formal challenges it receives, only how many it accepted and rejected, so no success rate can be stated with confidence and no challenge table is shown here. The figures it did give are worth knowing: it accepted 2,644 representations and rejected 951 in 2021/22, and accepted 2,514 and rejected 1,851 in 2025/26 — so on the cases it decided, more than half went the driver's way in every one of the five years, and roughly three in five in the earliest. Appeals that go further, to the independent adjudicator, are rare and have turned against drivers over time: 26 allowed against 4 refused in 2021/22, but 8 allowed against 50 refused in 2025/26, with a further 59 not contested by the council. See our guide to appealing a bus lane PCN for the grounds that win.
The fine itself
A bus lane PCN from City of Edinburgh Council is £100, reduced to £50 if paid within 14 days. It is a civil penalty — there are no licence points. Scotland sets bus lane charges separately from England: £100, halved to £50 if paid within 14 days. Note the wording differs too — in Scotland this is a bus lane charge notice, not a Penalty Charge Notice, and it is issued under the Transport (Scotland) Act 2001 rather than the English regime.
What the council does not hold or publish
2024/25, camera by camera. The council's freedom of information response gave the camera-by-camera breakdown for 2021/22, 2022/23, 2023/24 and 2025/26 and simply left 2024/25 out, with no exemption claimed for it. The yearly total for that year is known and shown above, but it cannot be split between cameras, so every camera's five-year total below is short by one year.
Income net of operating costs. The council publishes gross bus lane income only. It reports the cost of its parking enforcement contract as a single figure covering parking, permits and removals as well as bus lanes, so no bus-lane-only cost can be separated from it.
Penalties paid at the discounted rate. A figure was supplied but is not shown here because it cannot be true as stated alongside the income — see the note on the figures at the foot of this page.
The bus lanes behind these cameras
Each of these locations has a full page with operating hours, permitted vehicles and the governing traffic order: