How many bus lane Penalty Charge Notices Glasgow City Council issues, how much it raises, and how often challenges succeed — from data released under Freedom of Information (ref GT/8614536).
392,934
PCNs issued in 5 years2021/22–2025/26
£14.89m
gross income, 5 yearsnet of costs not held
76,213
PCNs in 2025/26
69%
paid at the £50 discount2025/26
20%
of challenges upheld2025/26
This page reports data released by Glasgow City Council under the Freedom of Information Act (GT/8614536, responded 2026-08-17). 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
Glasgow issued 95,068 bus lane penalties in 2021/22 and 76,213 in 2025/26, but the path between them is not a straight decline. Penalties fell to 55,017 in 2023/24 — a drop of more than a third in a single year — and then jumped back to 79,732 the year after. Income moved with it, from £2.85m to £1.76m and back to £3.16m, and the average collected per penalty barely changed across those years, so this was a change in how many penalties were issued rather than in how many were paid. The council gave no explanation for the dip and holds no per-camera or monthly figures that would show where it came from. The last year is the outlier for a different reason: 2025/26 collected £3,688,528, the highest of the five years, on fewer penalties than 2021/22 — the effect of the charge rising from £60 to £100 in September 2024.
Where the cameras are
Glasgow does not publish, and says it does not hold, a breakdown of which bus lane camera issued which penalty — so unlike most authorities on this site there is no league table here. The council's own list of where the cameras are is an interactive map rather than a list: it pointed to its Bus Gates and Bus Lanes page, which links through to a Glasgow GIS web map of bus and taxi lanes. BusLaneCheck holds 61 Glasgow bus lanes and bus gates, all verified against the council's own enforcement pages, and each has its own page on this site — but the penalty counts above cannot be attached to any one of them.
Challenges & appeals — do they work?
Formal representations to the council. Drivers made 51,890 formal challenges over 4 years.
Year
Challenges
Upheld
Rejected
Success rate
2022/23
5,868
1,355
—
23%
2023/24
12,755
3,443
—
27%
2024/25
16,727
3,178
—
19%
2025/26
16,540
3,308
—
20%
The council's own figures show the share of challenges upheld went from 23% in 2022/23 to 20% in 2025/26 — so a well-grounded challenge is worth making. Read this table carefully, because Glasgow counts challenges differently from most councils on this site. The figures cover every challenge the council received — informal disputes, formal representations and appeals that went all the way to a tribunal, added together — because it cannot separate them. Most authorities here report formal representations only, so Glasgow's numbers are a wider count and its percentages are not comparable with theirs. What they do show is that challenges have risen sharply while penalties have fallen: 5,868 in 2022/23 against 16,540 in 2025/26, so almost one Glasgow bus lane penalty in five is now disputed. Around a fifth of them succeed, and that share has held steady near 20% for four years. The council could not say how many were rejected, only how many were successful. See our guide to appealing a bus lane PCN for the grounds that win.
The fine itself
A bus lane PCN from Glasgow City Council is £100, reduced to £50 if paid within 14 days. It is a civil penalty — there are no licence points. Glasgow charged £60, halved to £30 for early payment, until 4 September 2024, when the council raised the bus lane charge to £100 with a £50 discount. The council stated that date in its response. Four of the five years below therefore sit mostly at the old rate and only 2025/26 is a full year at the new one, which is why the average collected per penalty rises from about £32 to £48 without the number of penalties going up.
What the council does not hold or publish
Which camera issued which penalty. The council does not record bus lane penalties by enforcement location or by month, and said so under regulation 10(4)(a) of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations. The city-wide annual totals on this page are what it offered instead, so there is no way to say which of Glasgow's bus gates is the busiest — the figures below cover every camera in the city at once.
What the cameras cost to run. The council does not hold a net operating cost for bus lane enforcement. The income here is gross: it is what drivers paid, not what the council kept after running the cameras and processing the penalties.
Early payments before 2024/25. Glasgow's penalty system keeps complete records for only two years, so the council could not say how many drivers paid at the discounted rate in 2021/22, 2022/23 or 2023/24.
Challenges in 2021/22, and how each one ended. The council holds no challenge figures at all for 2021/22 beyond the 6,582 it received, and cannot split any year into informal challenges, formal representations and tribunal appeals, or say how many were rejected. The table below is therefore four years long rather than five and has no rejected column.