How many bus lane Penalty Charge Notices Plymouth City Council issues, from which cameras, how much it raises — from data released under Freedom of Information (ref 858056455, clarified by FS-Case-864991677).
41,915
PCNs issued in 5 years2021/22–2025/26
£1.36m
gross income, 5 yearsnet of costs not held
9,741
PCNs in 2025/26across 11 cameras
77%
paid at the £35 discount2025/26
This page reports data released by Plymouth City Council under the Freedom of Information Act (858056455, clarified by FS-Case-864991677, responded 2026-09-04). 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
Plymouth's cameras caught 41,915 drivers over the five years and the total is rising: 7,228 in 2021/22 against 9,741 in 2025/26, a third more. Almost all of that growth is new cameras rather than worse driving at the old ones, and the long-established sites at Embankment Road, Exeter Street and Pemros Road have all roughly halved since 2021/22. Bravo Way, which only began enforcing in January 2025, is already the second busiest site in the city with 2,806 penalties in fifteen months. Tavistock Road is the busiest by a wide margin, with 14,291 penalties across its two cameras, a third of everything Plymouth issued. At the other end, Killerton Lane has issued two penalties in its life. Union Street is the sharpest fall anywhere in the data, from 1,125 penalties in 2024/25 to 114 in 2025/26. The cameras have raised £1,359,335 gross, an average of £32.43 for every penalty issued, and 31,550 of the 41,915 penalties — three in four — were paid at the discounted rate, which is a notably high proportion. Challenges have tripled over the period, from 612 in 2021 to 1,855 in 2025, and about a quarter succeed: across 2021–2025 drivers made 5,486 formal challenges and the council cancelled 1,555 of them. Going further is rarer and roughly a coin toss on the merits — the Traffic Penalty Tribunal decided 78 Plymouth appeals in five years, allowing 19, refusing 42, with the council not contesting 12 and settling 5 by consent.
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.
Ten enforcement sites, eleven cameras. Plymouth originally named thirteen, and two of them turned out not to be bus lanes at all. Asked to confirm what the restrictions were, the council said that no bus lane or bus gate restriction exists at Woolwell Roundabout or at Higher Compton Road, that there is no traffic order for either, and — for Higher Compton Road — that the penalty records it had supplied “do not relate to a bus lane or bus gate restriction at that location”. It apologised for including it. Both are therefore left out of the table below: Woolwell Roundabout with 2,124 penalties across two years, Higher Compton Road with 43 in one. The yearly totals higher up the page still include them, because the council reports its income and its discounted payments for the service as a whole rather than site by site, and there is no honest way to take their share out of the money. Two of the sites the council could confirm are new and now have traffic orders on record: Bravo Way, created by an order for Derriford Commercial Centre South and in force from 6 January 2025, and Killerton Lane at Saltram Meadows, in force from 1 September 2025. Neither appears on the council's published bus lane pages. One further site is not a separate place at all: the site the council's penalty records call Leypark Walk is the camera its Enhanced Partnership Scheme calls Leypark Drive, sitting at the junction where the two roads meet, so it is shown here under both names and linked to that lane. Embankment Road runs to two lane pages here, inbound and outbound, but the council reports it as one camera and one figure, so its count is not attributed to either. Three roads on the council's published camera list — Laira Bridge Road, Saltash Road and Western Approach — never appear in the penalty data because, the council has confirmed, the cameras there were never installed.
The fine itself
A bus lane PCN from Plymouth City 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 amount already recorded on every Plymouth lane page from the council's own enforcement pages. The FOI response did not restate it, but the money supports it: £1,359,335 collected against 41,915 penalties is £32.43 each, just under the discounted rate, which is what a mix of discounted and unpaid penalties produces.
What the council does not hold or publish
Income net of operating costs. The council holds records of what enforcement costs but not in a form that separates out bus lanes, and said that producing a net figure would mean apportioning shared costs — creating new information rather than releasing what it holds. It added that all penalty income is reinvested in Plymouth's highways and transport services, including non-commercial bus routes. Every income figure here is therefore gross.
Challenges and appeals on the same basis as the penalties. The council counts formal challenges by calendar year but issues penalties by financial year, and the two cannot be lined up without inventing a split, so there is no year-by-year challenge table on this page. The totals are in the summary below.
Authority totals that match the site list. The penalty counts, income and discounted-payment figures on this page are the council's own service-wide totals, and they still include two locations that the council has since confirmed are not bus lanes at all — 2,167 penalties over the five years, about 5% of the total. Those two are left out of the site table below, because listing them would say they are bus lane enforcement sites when the council says they are not. The council reports income and discounted payments for the service as a whole and not site by site, so there is no way to take their share back out of the money without inventing a split. The site table therefore comes to 2,167 fewer penalties than the yearly totals above it, and that gap is the whole of the difference.
The bus lanes behind these cameras
Each of these locations has a full page with operating hours, permitted vehicles and the governing traffic order: