Newcastle upon Tyne Bus Lane Fines — PCNs, Income & Appeals
How many bus lane Penalty Charge Notices Newcastle City Council issues, from which cameras, how much it raises, and how often challenges succeed — from data released under Freedom of Information (ref FOI 26698).
156,225
PCNs issued in 5 years2021/22–2025/26
£5.34m
gross income, 5 years−£420,477 net of operating costs
30,799
PCNs in 2025/26across 11 cameras
66%
paid at the £35 discount2025/26
41%
of challenges upheld2025/26
This page reports data released by Newcastle City Council under the Freedom of Information Act (FOI 26698, responded 2026-08-13). 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
Newcastle's bus lane enforcement does not make money. The council gave both its income and its expenditure — most authorities say costs cannot be separated — and across the five years it spent £5,756,583 to collect £5,336,107, a shortfall of £420,477. It ran a surplus in only two years, 2022/23 and 2023/24, and the gap has widened sharply since: a £347,733 loss in 2025/26 alone, the worst of the five, as costs rose to £1.33m while income fell to £986,529. Penalties tell the same story in reverse — they climbed from 24,033 in 2021/22 to a peak of 37,223 in 2024/25, then fell 17% to 30,799. Underneath the total, the city has quietly swapped which roads catch people. Westgate Road and Neville Street did not exist as camera sites until October 2022 and now account for 13,234 penalties a year between them, 43% of the city's total, while the oldest cameras have faded: Brunton Lane fell from 2,267 to 660 and Great North Road from 784 to 352. The Tyne Bridge slip road remains the single busiest camera in Newcastle at 6,580 a year, despite dropping by almost half since 2022/23.
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.
Newcastle runs eleven bus lane enforcement cameras across ten sites, and the council confirmed the full current list with the date each began: Great North Road, Brunton Lane, High Level Bridge and the Tyne Bridge slip road from July 2015, John Dobson Street (two cameras, northbound and southbound) from February 2016, North West Radial from October 2019, Westgate Road and Neville Street from October 2022, and Sir Bobby Robson Way in the Great Park from May 2025. Every one is a fixed camera — the council named no mobile enforcement at all. That list matters well beyond this page: BusLaneCheck tracks 36 bus lanes and bus gates in Newcastle, because the council separately publishes a much longer list of lane locations, and the 26 that do not appear above are now recorded as having no camera on the strength of the council's own answer. The restriction at each of those still stands and can still be enforced; there is simply no camera watching it.
Challenges & appeals — do they work?
Formal representations to the council, and appeals to the independent Traffic Penalty Tribunal. Drivers made 26,151 formal challenges over 5 years.
Year
Challenges
Upheld
Rejected
Success rate
To tribunal
2021/22
3,734
1,667
912
45%
15 (2 allowed / 13 dismissed)
2022/23
4,758
2,521
1,073
53%
17 (7 allowed / 7 dismissed)
2023/24
6,006
2,240
1,391
37%
37 (4 allowed / 32 dismissed)
2024/25
6,421
2,791
1,415
43%
15 (2 allowed / 11 dismissed)
2025/26
5,232
2,161
1,422
41%
24 (1 allowed / 19 dismissed)
The council's own figures show the share of challenges upheld went from 45% in 2021/22 to 41% in 2025/26 — so a well-grounded challenge is worth making. It is well worth challenging a Newcastle bus lane PCN. The council accepted and cancelled 11,380 of the 26,151 formal representations it received over the five years — 44%, one of the highest acceptance rates any authority has disclosed to us — against 6,213 rejected. Very few disputes go further: just 108 appeals reached the Traffic Penalty Tribunal in five years, and the council did not contest 10 of them. Of those it did contest the adjudicator sided with the driver only 16 times, so the value here is overwhelmingly in the first stage rather than the appeal. See our guide to appealing a bus lane PCN for the grounds that win.
The fine itself
A bus lane PCN from Newcastle City Council is £70, reduced to £35 if paid within 21 days. It is a civil penalty — there are no licence points. The FOI response did not restate the penalty. £70, halved to £35 within 21 days, is what all the Newcastle lane pages already carry from the council's own published bus lane list, and the money reported is consistent with it: in 2025/26 the council took £986,529 across 30,799 penalties, an average of £32 each, which sits just below the £35 discounted rate as it must if most drivers pay early.
What the council does not hold or publish
What the discounted-payment count actually counts. The council was explicit that these figures track income received during each year, not penalties issued in it, so they can include payments for PCNs served before April 2021. They cannot be read as the share of that year's penalties that were paid at the discount, and the 2023/24 figure of 23,812 against 34,914 penalties issued is a coincidence of timing rather than a settled 68% discount rate.
What happened to a third of the challenges. Across the five years the council records 26,151 formal representations but only 11,380 accepted and 6,213 rejected, leaving 8,558 — roughly a third — in neither column. The council explains part of that: where a leasing company shows the vehicle was hired out, liability transfers to the hirer and the representation ends without being accepted or rejected. The rest is not broken down.
Zero years for cameras that did not exist. Where a camera shows nil in an early year, that is because it was not yet installed rather than because nobody drove through it. Neville Street and Westgate Road went live in October 2022 and Sir Bobby Robson Way in May 2025; the start dates in the table above say which.
The bus lanes behind these cameras
Each of these locations has a full page with operating hours, permitted vehicles and the governing traffic order: