Stoke-on-Trent Bus Lane Fines — PCNs & Income

Stoke's bus lane cameras raised £2,963,611 over five years and cost £806,782 to run — the council is one of very few to disclose its bus lane expenditure — leaving £2,156,829 after costs. That net figure is income less expenditure as the council reported them, not a figure the council calculated itself. The peak was 2024/25: 28,144 penalties, £944,273 of income and £779,662 after costs. Then it halved: 14,703 penalties in 2025/26, with income down to £490,916 while costs rose to their highest of the five years, £181,826. The monthly figures show the shape behind that. Penalties almost vanished between May and August 2023 — 136, 129, 322 and 253 — then jumped to 5,740 in October 2023 as the two College Road cameras went live, and ran at mostly 2,000 to 6,000 a month until September 2024, peaking at 6,077 in July. From October 2024 they fell back to roughly 700 to 1,050 a month for a year, then rose to between 1,300 and 2,100 from September 2025 to January 2026.

Where the cameras are

Camera enforcement in Stoke-on-Trent began in October 2010 — the month the city's Bus Lanes (No. 52) Consolidation Order came into force. The council names nine enforced locations. Over five years College Road, which has two cameras, accounted for 49,931 notices, close to half the city's total; then Quadrant Road 14,523, the two Stafford Street bus gates 11,486, Trinity Street 11,119, Bethesda Street 7,561, Lower Bethesda Street 6,927, New Hall Street 824, Mayne Street 774 and Christchurch Street 78. The three lowest figures have straightforward explanations: New Hall Street was not camera-enforced until March 2024, Mayne Street until August 2025, and Christchurch Street is patrolled by a camera car rather than watched by a fixed camera. These per-location totals are not shown as a league table because the council's report by street counts warning notices as well as penalty charge notices and cannot separate the two: they add up to 103,223, against 98,961 penalty charge notices alone. The bus gate on Station Road outside the railway station is not on the list either — the council says camera enforcement there starts in September 2026.

Challenges & appeals — do they work?

Formal challenges peaked at 3,399 in 2023/24 and 3,325 in 2024/25, the two years around the College Road cameras going live, then fell to 1,317. The council's categories do not reduce to a simple accepted-or-rejected split: alongside 152 to 1,140 representations accepted a year and 39 to 132 rejected, it separately counts penalties paid after acknowledgement and representations accepted but where the penalty was not cancelled. Appeals reaching the Traffic Penalty Tribunal rose sharply, from 3 in 2021/22 to 35 in 2024/25, and the council won most of them. See our guide to appealing a bus lane PCN for the grounds that win.