Tameside Bus Lane Fines — PCNs, Income & Appeals

Tameside stopped enforcing its bus lanes in April 2025 and restarted on 8 July 2026, so the figures below describe a service that then went dark for fifteen months. The council issued 36 penalties in April 2025 and none afterwards: asked to explain the gap, it replied that enforcement 'at all of the seven camera locations were suspended and no further penalty charge notices were issued from 10 April 2025 at all locations'. It confirmed on 9 September 2026 that it had replaced the cameras at all seven sites during the gap, as part of changes to its parking enforcement arrangements, that the replacements are installed and operational, and that the traffic regulation orders stayed in force throughout — so the lanes and their signs never stopped applying. It holds no record of a decision to suspend. Everything below therefore ends in April 2025: enforcement from 8 July 2026 onwards is not yet covered by any figures the council has released. Over the four full years before that, the seven cameras issued 13,622 penalties and took £412,038, an average of £30.25 each, almost exactly the £30 a driver pays if they settle within 21 days. Enforcement had already roughly halved partway through: 4,333 penalties in 2021/22 and 4,279 in 2022/23, then 2,438 and 2,572. The fall was concentrated in one place. New Beech Street in Hyde was the borough's busiest camera by a distance, issuing 2,105 penalties in 2022/23, and it had dropped to 497 by 2024/25 — a fall of more than three quarters, and the single biggest reason the borough's totals came down. Manchester Road South in Denton moved the other way, halving in 2023/24 and then more than doubling back to 776, and it accounts for 27 of the 36 penalties issued in the final month of enforcement. Unusually, Tameside also told us what enforcement costs it, so a true bottom line is possible: £262,155 net across the five years. That figure is not quite the whole picture — the council excludes staff costs and shared corporate services from it, which it says are not charged to bus lanes directly.

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.

Seven cameras across four roads. Oldham Road in Ashton-under-Lyne carries three of them, at Langham Street, near the playground and near Cranbrook Street, and Audenshaw Road two, one on the south side near Ash Street and one at the Manor Road junction; New Beech Street and Manchester Road South have one each. All but one operate 7am to 10am and 4pm to 7pm; New Beech Street in Hyde runs 24 hours a day, which is a large part of why it issues the most penalties. The oldest cameras went live in May and December 2014, the newest on New Beech Street in October 2015. Manchester Road North in Denton is signed as a bus lane but has never had a camera and appears in none of these figures — the council confirmed that in writing and has since taken the road off its own published list.

Challenges & appeals — do they work?

Formal representations to the council, and appeals to the independent Traffic Penalty Tribunal. Drivers made 2,329 formal challenges over 5 years.

The council's own figures show the share of challenges upheld went from 23% in 2021/22 to 13% in 2025/26 — so a well-grounded challenge is worth making. Challenging a Tameside penalty was worth doing, but the odds worsened before enforcement stopped. Across the five years drivers made 2,329 formal representations and the council accepted 543 of them — a little under one in four. That rate fell sharply towards the end: the council upheld 34% of challenges in 2023/24 and only 15% in 2024/25. Very few cases went further. Just 34 reached the Traffic Penalty Tribunal in five years, from more than 13,600 penalties, and the council did not say how those were decided. Note also that Tameside gives 21 days to pay at the discounted rate rather than the usual 14, so there is more time to think about it than in most of the country. See our guide to appealing a bus lane PCN for the grounds that win.