Drivers continue to generate hundreds of thousands of pounds for County Hall through controversial bus gate

Reform UK at County Hall continue to be reluctant to budge on the bus gate

Hello and welcome to The Lancashire Lead.

We hope the last three or four days have been whatever you wanted them to be, whether a joyous occasion or just hoping for a peaceful few days.

Christmas can be an expensive time for us all, but if you’re County Hall then at least you can rely on massive sums generated by penalty charge notices to help soften the blow.

In today’s edition we look at how much revenue has been generated by the hugely controversial Corporation Street bus gate in Preston.

We will be back with you on New Year’s Eve and we hope whatever you’re up to in the next few days goes well.

Lancashire briefing

❄️ Lancashire’s highways boss has denied claims that the county’s grit bins will no longer be filled more than once a year – but has urged residents to use their contents sparingly and only in the places for which it is intended. There are almost 3,000 of the distinctive – usually yellow – vessels dotted around Lancashire’s dozen districts. They are mostly found on more minor roads – often in residential areas – that are not gritted by the vehicles that criss-cross the county treating main routes when temperatures plummet. The leader of the Labour group on Lancashire County Council – which is responsible for most of the area’s non-motorway routes, except in Blackpool and Blackburn with Darwen – said he was advised , during a recent visit to one of the authority’s depots that grit bins would not from now on be topped up once they had been filled to the brim each September. However, cabinet member for highways and transport Warren Goldsworthy said the grit bin arrangements had not altered – and that refills had never been guaranteed in a particular timeframe.

💷 Lancashire County Council says it will be early in the new year before it knows the full implications of the government’s new funding plans for the authority. The publication last week of the annual finance settlements for all local authorities marked the start of a new ‘fair funding’ regime first promised by the previous Conservative government almost a decade ago, but which never came to fruition. The current Labour administration has now delivered the long-promised overhaul, creating a link, it says, between the level of deprivation in an area and the amount of money received by the councils covering that patch. The new approach was reflected in the funding each local authority was last week told it would be getting – although the amounts are provisional, pending a consultation with councils which will close in mid-January.

🗑️ Preston should establish a regular ‘community service day’ to encourage residents to volunteer a few hours of their time to help improve their neighbourhoods – and strengthen the bonds between locals. That is the call from a city councillor who says he has been inspired by an initiative in Rwanda, a version of which he believes would benefit Preston. Cllr Maxwell Green, deputy leader of the Conservative group at the town hall, discovered the “umuganda” scheme when studying for his PhD in international relations, which focused on efforts to rebuild Rwanda in the wake of the genocide that occured in the country in 1994. On the last Saturday of every month, everybody who is physically capable of doing so spends three hours taking part in organised public works projects which range in scale from building new facilities to tree-planting and litter-picking. They can also use the time to help vulnerable individuals who may need assistance around their own homes. “Even the President does it,” Cllr Green said. That is because, in Rwanda, the initiative is mandatory – the one aspect of the idea which the Sharoe Green ward representative says could not be imported into Preston.

Drivers continue to generate hundreds of thousands of pounds for County Hall through controversial bus gate

The Corporation Street bus gate. Credit: The Lancashire Lead

By Paul Faulkner

Motorists were caught out more than 22,000 times by a controversial ‘bus gate’ in Preston in the last six months – in spite of it now having been in operation for more than a year.

The bus-only zone on Corporation Street, near the city centre, was installed in May 2024 – barring most through-traffic from travelling between Heatley Street and Marsh Lane.

However, Lancashire County Council allowed a grace period before it started issuing fines for breaching the new rule – with penalty charge notices (PCNs) only being dished out from late June that year.

But data shows that, 12 months after those tickets first started landing on doormats, an average of almost 900 unlawful trips a week are still being made along the short stretch of road – by vehicles other than the buses, Hackney taxis and bicycles that are authorised to do so.

Between 15 June and 22 December, 22,424 PCNs were issued to those caught flouting the regulation – generating £665,277 for the county council’s coffers.

The rate of rule-breaking has slowed significantly since enforcement first began – when almost £1m was racked up in fines in the three months after the day the cameras went live.

However, the latest figures show that failure to adhere to the rule is still costing motorists more than £100,000 a month, on average.

The authority previously said – in a response to a Freedom of Information request made by Blog Preston – that £2.68m worth of PCNs had been generated by the Corporation Street bus gate in the 12 months to 16 June, 2025.

That means that drivers have now fallen foul of the cameras more than 100,000 times since they were switched on – the data did show how many motorists have been caught more than once – yielding £3.35m in fines.

Each PCN costs £70, although that is halved to £35 if paid within 21 days. Of those issued in the last six months, 16,866 – or three quarters – were settled at the discounted rate.

Back In October, the majority of members of Preston City Council called for the bus gate to be suspended until a “full reassessment” of its impact was carried out – with the fines being branded a “stealth tax”.

Figures show that overall income from bus lane and bus gate fines at the 19 such sites across the Lancashire County Council area – which excludes Blackpool and Blackburn with Darwen – fell from £2.94m in 2024, when 81,417 PCNs were issued, to £2.24m up until mid-December this year, by which point 68,504 tickets had been handed out.

Although Lancashire County Council did not provide a breakdown of income by each location, it appears likely that a large proportion of the drop is due to the reduction in PCNs from Corporation Street compared to last year.