Gloucestershire Bus Lane Fines — Gloucester, Cheltenham & Brockworth

How many bus lane Penalty Charge Notices Gloucestershire County Council issues across Gloucester, Cheltenham & Brockworth, how much it raises — from data released under Freedom of Information (ref 47938727).

61,847
PCNs issued in 3 years2023–2025
£2.04m
gross income, 3 yearsnet of costs not held
29,439
PCNs in 2025
74%
paid at the £35 discount2025
This page reports data released by Gloucestershire County Council under the Freedom of Information Act (47938727, responded 2026-08-18). 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
17,235202315,173202429,4392025
Gross PCN income per year
£598,0652023£491,8212024£946,7642025

Gloucestershire's bus lane cameras issued 61,847 penalties across the three years on this page and raised £2,036,650 — an average of £32.93 for every penalty, against a charge of £70 halved to £35 for prompt payment. That average sits just under the discounted rate because nearly three-quarters of penalties are paid early: 45,164 of the 61,847 were paid at £35. The striking feature is 2025, when penalties nearly doubled year on year, from 15,173 to 29,439, and income rose from £491,821 to £946,764. The council's monthly figures put the step change in September 2024: through the summer of that year the county was issuing a few hundred bus lane penalties a month, 253 in July and 837 in August, and from September it issued about 3,000 a month and has stayed near that level since. The council did not explain either the quiet months or the jump. The 2024/25 financial year straddles it, and is the one year the council publishes itself: its annual parking report gives 20,280 penalties and £654,453 for that year, which is within 48 penalties of the same twelve months added up from the monthly figures here — the two counts having been run on different dates.

Where the cameras are

The council would not say how many penalties each camera issued in these years, but its 2024/25 annual parking report publishes the site-by-site table for that financial year, and enforcement is concentrated on very few roads. Brunswick Road in Gloucester alone issued 5,782 of the 20,280 bus lane penalties that year and raised £202,718 of the £654,453 total. Albion Street in Cheltenham followed with 3,288, the Barley Road bus gate with 3,134, and Guan Road at Typhoon Way in Brockworth with 2,172 — those four roads between them accounted for seven penalties in every ten. Below them the numbers fall away sharply: Llanthony Road 1,708, Woodvale 1,013, B4063 Gloucester Road 684, Cambourne Place in Lydney 621, and everything else in the county under 550, down to a single penalty on the A40 near Whittington Road. Payment rates diverge just as sharply — the four busiest sites were paid on 85 to 92 per cent of penalties, while Woodvale was paid on 29 per cent.

The fine itself

A bus lane PCN from Gloucestershire County 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, is the standard charge for a bus lane contravention outside London, and it is the amount recorded on every Gloucestershire lane page from the council's own bus lane pages. The council's annual parking report quotes a 14-day discount window, but that section is about parking penalties handed to a car at the roadside; a bus lane penalty is posted to the registered keeper, and the Bus Lane Contraventions (England and Wales) Regulations 2005 give 21 days for those.

What the council does not hold or publish

  • How many penalties each camera issued in the years on this page. The council refused the per-location breakdown under section 21 of the Freedom of Information Act — the exemption for information already reasonably accessible — and pointed at its own annual parking report instead. That report does publish a full site-by-site table, but only for the 2024/25 financial year, and the figures on this page are calendar years, so the two cannot be lined up without inventing a split the council has not published. The 2024/25 table is summarised below the charts instead.
  • 2022, and the first eight months of 2026. Both were supplied and both are left out. For 2022 the council reported 13,475 penalties and 3,733 of them paid at the £35 discount, but income of only £111,990 — less than the discounted payments alone come to, so at least one of the three figures is wrong. The 2026 months up to August total 13,060 penalties and £379,225, but the council said its revenue figures are a snapshot and will rise as payments continue to arrive, so a part year cannot fairly be set beside the full ones.
  • Anything net of what enforcement costs. The council was explicit that its revenue figures exclude camera installation, electrical supplies, posts, lining, signing, borrowing costs, maintenance and all back-office processing, and that no net figure is held. Every income figure here is gross.
  • Challenges and appeals. Refused under the same section 21 exemption. The annual parking report does carry a bus lane challenge table — 1,251 representations rejected and 537 accepted in 2024/25 — but its stated base of 22,708 penalties is bus lane and moving-traffic penalties added together, not the 20,280 bus lane penalties the same report gives. Publishing those rows as bus lane figures would attribute moving-traffic challenges to bus lanes, so no challenges section is shown.
  • The council's own annual totals. The response's totals row does not match its own monthly figures. It gives 19,258 for 2023 against months summing to 17,235, and 17,197 for 2024 against months summing to 15,173 — each overstated by exactly the year number, 2,023 and 2,024, which is what a spreadsheet does when a total swallows the header row. Its 2025 total of 3,146 is smaller than several individual months in the same column. The figures on this page are the sums of the council's monthly numbers, calculated here, not the totals it printed.

The bus lanes behind these cameras

Each of these locations has a full page with operating hours, permitted vehicles and the governing traffic order: