DLR penalty fares issued set to double this year

The number of penalty fares issued on the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) is set to double this year, newly released figures show.

A total of 4,472 DLR penalty fares were handed out between April and 26 November, compared with 2,571 in the year to March 2025, according to Transport for London (TfL) which said revenue protection exercises had increased by 50% in 2025.

It follows Tube prosecutions for fare evasion jumping to the highest level in six years in 2024-25 when 13,118 penalty fare notices and 850 written warnings were handed out.

TfL said it took fare evasion "extremely seriously" as "it takes away vital revenue from us that should be invested in a safe, reliable transport network".

The number of DLR penalty fares issued in 2023-24 was 2,954 out of more than 4.1m checks of contactless cards carried out.

There have already been more than 3.1m card checks in the first eight months of this financial year, up from 2.8m in the whole of last year.

Penalty fares are set at £100, reduced to £50 if paid within 21 days.

The figures were released after a Freedom of Information request.

Since a new franchise started in April 2025, inspections are being carried out more frequently with annual revenue protection exercises increasing to 540, according to TfL, which said the target of contactless cards checked had risen from 10% to 15%.

"We have a multi-pronged strategy in place to reduce the risk of fare evasion and have set a target to halve the level of fare evasion by 2030," TfL said in a statement.

TfL previously revealed it spent nearly £14.2m cracking down on fare-dodging across the Tube and £7.7m on the bus network in 2023-24, collecting £1.3m in penalty charges.

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