Stockport Bus Lane Fines — PCNs, Income & Appeals

Stockport issued 161,532 bus gate penalties in the five years to March 2026 and collected just over £5m. The shape of that is almost entirely one scheme: the two Heaton Lane bus gates opened to enforcement on 4 April 2022 and issued 52,047 penalties in their first year, more than any other single year on this page. They have fallen every year since — 42,141, then 32,514, then 27,157 — so by 2025/26 they were catching just over half what they caught at the start. That is the pattern you would expect as drivers learn a new restriction rather than a sign of the cameras being switched off.

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.

Three enforcement locations, all of them bus gates rather than open bus lanes, and all three still working. The Buxton Road gate at Hazel Grove is the long-standing one, enforced since 20 October 2018, and it is remarkably steady — between 1,319 and 1,903 penalties in every one of the five years, with no trend in either direction. The two Heaton Lane gates account for everything else. Their near-zero 2021/22 figures — two penalties eastbound and none westbound — are not a quiet year but an incomplete one: the gates were introduced on 22 February 2022 and enforcement did not begin until 4 April 2022, a few days into the next financial year.

Challenges & appeals — do they work?

Formal representations to the council. Drivers made 85 formal challenges in 2021/22.

The council upheld 21% of the challenges it received in 2021/22, so a well-grounded challenge is worth making. Only the first year of challenge figures has been transcribed so far. In 2021/22, when Buxton Road was the only gate being enforced, drivers made 85 formal representations against 1,905 penalties — about one challenge for every 22 tickets — and the council accepted 18 and rejected 65. That acceptance rate, roughly one in five, is markedly less generous than authorities such as Doncaster, though a single year at a single location is too little to read much into. See our guide to appealing a bus lane PCN for the grounds that win.