Council wipes £22m worth of clean air zone fines

A council has written off £22m of unpaid Clean Air Zone (CAZ) fines over 18 months, a report has revealed.

The six-monthly debt report to the strategy and resources committee at Bristol City Council stated warrants for payment were now expiring with no collection.

Of the 45,000 warrants issued, there are only 11,000 debtors. This is reportedly due to "repeat offenders" with such large debts that full recovery would be difficult.

The report said: "Debts are proposed for write off only when all recovery avenues have been exhausted and are approved in accordance with authorisation levels."

It added 59% of all debt written off by Bristol City Council from April to September last year were CAZ fines – totalling £9.9m, on top of £12.2m for the 2024/25 financial year.

The report said there had been a delay in issuing warrants to enforcement agents due to the backlog built up during Covid-19, compounded by ICT issues with the transfer of data to the courts.

At least two letters need to be sent out chasing fines before a face-to-face visit is considered.

"Due to the sheer volume of cases, it is taking them longer to schedule the face-to-face visits and this is why the full value of the liability raised at the end of 2023-24 was not realised in 2024-25," the report added.

The council says different income types are invoiced on a range of payment terms, so it is not always possible to determine how much is overdue.

According to the report, a centralised Debt Collection and Recovery Team is now in place, and it has already reduced outstanding debt by £6,671,044.

Despite this, the authority was still owed a grand total of £205m from all debtors at the end of September 2025, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

This includes outstanding council tax, current and former tenant rent arrears, overpaid housing benefit, temporary accommodation and parking fines.

Council tax arrears alone rose from £51.9 to £62.2m between April and September last year.

The report said: "Several factors will contribute to this, including the year-on-year increase in charge [4.99%]. We can expect more households to struggle, and there will be higher levels of debt."

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