Plea for Preston bus lane fines to stay in city

11 hours ago

Paul FaulknerLocal Democracy Reporting Service

News image — Motorists who breach the rules are issued with a £70 penalty charge notice

BBC An image of a Bus Lane, with white writing on the floor spelling out 'Bus Lane'. The road is grey and has double yellow lines to the left of the image and is taken on a busy street. — Motorists who breach the rules are issued with a £70 penalty charge notice

Business leaders have called for the cash raised from bus gate fines issued in Preston to stay in the city and be spent on improving its roads.

The most recently-introduced restriction, on Corporation Street, generated £3.3m in 18 months for Lancashire County Council.

The authority said it invested the proceeds from the penalty charge notices into maintaining and upgrading the highway network.

However, that money can be used on improvement projects anywhere in the county council's patch – and across any of the 4,600 miles of road for which it is responsible.

The Preston Business Improvement District (BID) and the North and Western Chamber of Commerce have written to County Hall to request that at least a proportion of revenue generated by Preston's eight bus gates is retained in the city.

The organisations said businesses had expressed "concerns" over the fines – and urged the highways authority to invest some of the income derived from drivers in the city "directly into improvements within Preston".

An image showing three signs, the top is a blue bus lane sign, with a white image of a bus and a bicycle, below that, a white sign with black letters and an image of a camera, then below that, a yellow sign with black letters saying, bus lane camera enforcement commences 2nd Feb 2026. The signs are on New Hall Lane in Preston, and in the background you can see boarded up shops in red bricked terraces. The sky is blue. — Lancashire County Council says it invests the proceeds from the penalty charge notices in maintaining and upgrading the highway network

The two groups also demand "transparency" over where the fines cash is currently spent – and details of any "tangible benefits" being felt by Preston, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

Motorists who breach the rules are issued with a £70 penalty charge notice, which is reduced to £35 if paid within 21 days.

Responding to the issues raised by the business groups, county councillor Warren Goldsworthy, cabinet member for highways, said: "Any surplus income is reinvested in the county's highways budget where it is used to benefit all the residents of Lancashire through highway improvements.

"Money is not ringfenced to specific areas because as the highway authority, we have a duty to prioritise areas of greatest need, so sometimes this will be within Preston and sometimes it won't."

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