Reform UK backs Preston bus gates - despite campaigning against them elsewhere in UK

Reform UK said the bus gates in Preston are working well - despite over £2.6m generated in fines

Hello and welcome to The Lancashire Lead.

Nobody likes bus gates - but everyone likes their councils to have the money to provide services. That’s an incredibly reductive way of describing Preston’s ongoing bus gate row, but the £2m+ made in fines at Corporation Street is not something that Reform UK-led Lancashire County Council want to give up.

But their stance on Preston’s bus gate sits at odds with how they’ve campaigned against them in the past.

Today’s edition digs into the topic of bus gates after Preston City Council - Labour led - called for a rethink.

Lancashire briefing

🥕 The owner of a longstanding food shop in Preston has been told his fruit and veg display outside is not allowed to stay. But despite his point that the shop and display have been a fixture of Holmrook Road for the best part of two decades, officers at Lancashire County Council have now enforced the ruling that they are causing an obstruction after an undisclosed number of complaints. And the efforts of the owner, along with his councillor at County Hall Michael Lavalette, to find an alternative solution ultimately did not improve the situation.

🎸 A popular Lancaster music venue due to close at the end of the year has had a reprieve until well into 2026. Kanteena will continue operating at Brewery Lane while developers work on their wider plans for the site, it was announced. Developers Marco Living and Axis-RE also said they were exploring the potential for creating a permanent cultural venue as part of their regeneration plans for the Brewery Lane site.

🍴 A restaurant in the Ribble Valley is the newest addition to the prestigious Michelin Guide. Eight at Gazegill by Doug Crampton is described by the guide as the ‘epitome of field-to-fork dining’ thanks to the local family-run farm. The Sunday roast is cited as a particular highlight. It becomes the fourteenth restaurant in the guide in a county that continues to punch above its weight in the fine dining world.

Reform UK backs the bus gates - despite campaigning against them elsewhere in UK

The Corporation Street bus gate

By Luke Beardsworth and Paul Faulkner

Reform UK will ignore calls to suspend controversial bus gates in Preston - despite campaigning for the same elsewhere in the country.

Preston City Council has called on Lancashire County Council to re-examine the bus-only zone on Corporation Street - and to pause any plans to enforce a bus lane on New Hall Lane.

A Freedom of Information request made by Blog Preston uncovered that the Corporation Street bus gate had generated £2.6m in fines by June 2025 after being introduced in May 2024.

The schemes were both implemented by the previous Conservative administration at Lancashire County Council but Reform UK have since backed the plans and said they generate revenue and improve bus punctuality.

There was cross-party agreement at Preston City Council for a motion - brought by Labour’s Cllr Siraz Natha - that County Hall conduct a full reassessment of the impact of the gates.

Bringing the motion to a recent meeting of Preston’s full council, the Labour representative for the Deepdale ward branded the pair of schemes “a stealth tax that’s been imposed on the residents of Preston”.

“We want an integrated transport system in Preston and less pollution, but what I probably don’t agree with…is random initiatives that come along… generating huge amounts of money.

“People will say [drivers] can see the signs, why are [they ignoring them]? But I don’t know that many people who go around towns…[looking] to try and get fines,” Cllr Natha added, reflecting on the sheer scale of rule breaches that have occurred on Corporation Street.

The motion comes around six months after the city’s Labour MP Sir Mark Hendrick called on the council to scrap the bus gate and called it a ‘money-making scheme’ and amid a step up in campaigning against Reform UK ahead of next May’s local elections.

The city council’s Liberal Democrat opposition group leader John Potter said that while he supported “the principle” of regulating traffic flows “to improve the businesses and lives of people” in an area, it was one that was being undermined by “badly designed schemes”.

But the scheme was backed by Preston City Council’s only Reform member Cllr Stephen Thompson. He defected from Reform UK around two months ago.

He said: “[They] do facilitate the buses to be more punctual…and [the county council] have the figures to actually back this up.

“It is frustrating when you get a fine…[and] it does generate money …but if people go down a bus lane when they shouldn’t do, then there has to be a penalty.”

Cllr Fiona Duke, the Lib Dem member for Greyfriars, disputed the claimed success of the restrictions, telling the meeting that she had spoken to a bus driver who said services were “still getting stuck” when they joined the A59 – negating any time saved earlier.

The city council’s Labour leader Matthew Brown said it was right that the county authority explored “what’s been going wrong” to result in so many drivers being fined on Corporation Street.

Reform in power vs Reform in opposition

Reform UK’s backing of the bus gates sits at odds with campaigning done elsewhere in the UK.