Preston bus gate signage vandalised

Vandals have left drivers at risk of inadvertently breaching the rules at a controversial bus-only zone in Preston – by turning around a key warning sign.

It means motorists heading towards the ‘bus gate’ on Corporation Street get no notice of it from one direction – and are actively nudged to drive straight through it from another.

Lancashire County Council says it will not issue fines to anyone who falls foul of the restriction when coming from the affected approaches – on separate sections of Heatley Street – until the signage is rectified.

After being alerted to the tampering by the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS), the authority is also encouraging anybody who believes they have received a penalty charge notice (PCN) as a result of the sign swivel to appeal against their ticket.

The bus gate, which was recently revealed to have generated more money in fines than any other bus priority measure in the country last year – a total of £1.5m – bans through traffic from a short stretch of Corporation Street between the junctions with Marsh Lane and Heatley Street.

The sign that has been interfered with stands at the end of the western side of Heatley Street and gives a ‘no left turn’ order – to prevent vehicles that emerge from the side road entering the restricted area on the main route.

However, the signage has been spun around 180 degrees – and so motorists from that approach get no indication of any restriction on the turns they can make at the junction.

Meanwhile, on the opposite side of Corporation Street, drivers coming out of the eastern section of Heatley Street are now confronted with the wrongly-oriented no left turn sign – suggesting that they cannot travel down towards Ringway.

Anybody obeying that false instruction would get the impression that they could instead turn right onto Corporation Street – a manoeuvre that would send them straight into the bus gate and normally land them with a £70 fine.

To complicate matters even further, a ‘no right turn’ sign – which has not been tampered with and so is giving the correct order – is set just back from the junction on the eastern stretch of Heatley Street, meaning drivers get contradictory instructions within the space of a few yards.

That section of Heatley Street is a relatively busy route that leads to the well-used Hill Street and Seed Street car parks.

Responding to the vandalism of the signage – which includes what appears to be graffitied initials scrawled on its face – a spokesperson for Reform UK-run Lancashire County Council told the LDRS: “We are aware that an advanced sign at the Corporation Street bus gate has been tampered with – and we will be returning the sign to its correct position.

“Drivers must continue to follow all signs and restrictions of the bus gate – however, until the sign on Heatley Street is returned to its correct position, we will not enforce the left turn movement that drivers may make by mistake into the bus gate, as enforcement here is not intended to penalise drivers who have acted in good faith.

“Anyone who feels they may have unfairly received a penalty charge notice can challenge this through the appeals process.

“The bus gate on Corporation Street uses signs which meet all the legislative requirements and are consistent with our other bus restrictions that are enforced.”

Although the county council’s statement makes no reference to how the authority will treat drivers making an unlawful right turn from the east of Heatley Street, the LDRS has confirmed PCNs will not be issued in those circumstances while the sign is facing the wrong way – and any that already have been generated can be appealed.

The LDRS also understands that the cameras monitoring the bus gate are positioned so that they capture the exact direction from which any vehicle entering the restricted space has come – meaning it will be easy to dismiss any phony claims made against fines. The signage that has been turned around can only mislead drivers on the two Heatley Street approaches, not those travelling along Corporation Street itself.

It is not known how long the warning notice has been pointing in the wrong direction.

As the LDRS previously revealed, drivers falling foul of the Corporation Street bus gate boosted County Hall’s coffers by a total of £3.35m in the first 18 months after enforcement began in June 2024.

During that period, the regulation was breached more than 100,000 times – a tally that will include any motorists who got caught out on more than one occasion on the route, which connects the university quarter to Ringway.

PCNs issued for bus gate contraventions in the Lancashire County Council area are reduced to £35 if paid within 21 days.

‘The bus gate has got to go’

Preston City Council’s Labour leader Matthew Brown – who also represents the Preston Central West division on the county council, in which the western side of Heatley Street sits – condemned the interference with the bus gate sign, but called on the county council to show genuine “leniency” when assessing any appeals.

“It’s obviously very wrong that this has [happened] and I hope the people who’ve done it are caught.

“But the reality is that any motorists fined [as a result of the sign tampering] are not [at] fault. There are people who might not know the area – and there are some people [from] Preston who don’t venture down there that much,” County Cllr Brown said.

He also renewed his authority’s call for the county council to scrap the Corporation Street bus gate altogether, which received cross-party support last year, save for from the town hall’s lone Reform UK member.

“The community simply doesn’t want [it]. Bus gates are basically so unpopular with the public in Preston that we need to look at something else, because they’ve completely lost public support.

“Also, when you’re raising that amount of money, it’s not good traffic management,” County Cllr Brown added.

Independent county councillor Yousuf Motala – the member for the Preston City division, which incorporates the east of Heatley Street – said that while he did not “condone” what had been done to the signage, it was time for the bus gate “to go”.

A longstanding critic of the restriction, he told the LDRS: “I think people have had enough – I’m still getting residents complaining about it.

“People from Frenchwood, in particular, used to use that route to get back to their area, but with it all being closed off, it’s a nightmare, You can’t even go down Friargate anymore.

“Businesses are suffering because of it – and people are saying they don’t want to come back into Preston,” County Cllr Motala said.

At Lancashire County Council’s budget meeting in February, the Liberal Democrat group called on the Reform administration to axe the bus gate on Corporation Street and a new bus lane on part of New Hall Lane – both of which were approved when the Conservatives were in control of the local authority prior to May 2025.

County council leader Stephen Atkinson said in response that there was “maybe something we can do” – and drew a distinction between “people that offend repeatedly and don’t pay adherence” to the rules and those who “innocently do it for the first time”.

“I think there’s definitely a conversation we can have going forward,” County Cllr Atkinson said.