Preston teacher 'reduced to tears’ after bus gate fine row

A teacher from Preston says she was reduced to tears after being threatened with bailiffs for failing to pay a traffic fine that she knew nothing about for almost a year.

Jessica, who only wanted her first name published, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) she received an enforcement notice last month demanding £190 for driving through the ‘bus gate’ restriction on Corporation Street, near the city centre, in October 2024.

However, she says she was totally unaware of the original penalty charge notice (PCN) – which would have been just £35 if paid within 21 days of it being issued by Lancashire County Council.  The standard fine is £70 and must be settled within four weeks.

But in the 10 months since the offence, that bill has ballooned – and now includes the fee levied by the enforcement agency enlisted to collect the cash for the local authority after the PCN was not initially paid.

Jessica says an unexpected veterinary bill meant she was unable to pay the £190 within the four weeks she was given by the firm – and so she has been told she could now face a visit from the bailiffs.  In that scenario, she would also have to pay their £235 fee, bringing her bill to a total of £425  – more than 12 times the original PCN at the reduced early payment rate.

The county council says the address at which Jessica was registered with the Driver Vehicle and Licensing Agency (DVLA) was incorrect at the time her ticket was issued.

However, the teacher says that as her mother still lived in that property – and regularly forwarded her any mail that arrived – that makes no difference. She insists that the PCN simply never appeared and says the nightmare in which she has found herself as a result highlights serious flaws in the system operated by the authority.

“When Lancashire County Council send a letter about a PCN, they consider it legally served from the time it’s sent – but it does not have to be sent by signed-for delivery, so they don’t have to prove that it was delivered to the address.

“So if they were ever to [issue] a ticket that is then not received, you are [still] liable – and I did not receive [mine].   I’m a responsible person, I’m a homeowner – I would have paid it, I don’t want to be in debt.

“I’ve been very stressed about the situation and when [the enforcement firm] said I was at risk of bailiffs at my door, I was in tears.

“It’s ludicrous that [the county council] can rake in all this money in tickets, but depends on [the reliability of] the mail service and can’t [use] signed-for delivery to prove they sent them in the first place,” Jessica said.

Figures revealed that in the year to June 2025 – the first 12 months that the new rules on Corporation Street were fully enforced – the bus gate generated £2.68m in fines from more than 80,000 individual PCNs. The regulation prohibits travel by all vehicles except buses and Hackney taxis along the short stretch of the route between Heatley Street and Marsh Lane.

Jessica says the DVLA was updated with her new address in November last year and that a redirect was also put on her mail after her mother left the property in December – seven weeks after her breach of the bus gate.

In spite of receiving other post via that arrangement, the first she learned of her now £190 fine was a letter from Jacobs Enforcement that arrived at her old address in August – and to which she was alerted by the new occupants of the property.

Jessica told the LDRS that the inflexibility of the system she has encountered since has compounded the problem.   She claims she was unable to speak to a person over the phone at Lancashire County Council after an automated system refused to accept her PCN number – and that, in response to a detailed email, she was told there was nothing the authority could now do, because the matter had already been passed on to an enforcement agency.

She says that when she approached Jacobs Enforcement, she was met with similar rigidity and a demand for full payment within four weeks – in spite of the fact that she had by then lodged an appeal with the Traffic Penalty Tribunal, which can take up to six weeks to reach a decision in a case.

“I said, ‘What if I don’t have a judgment in four weeks?’ And they said you must pay.

“I called them back up [after there was no judgement within that time] and explained it to them again and they stated: ‘You agreed to pay £190 on your last call.’

“They said they are mandated by the county council to get payment within four weeks – and that’s it,” Jessica says.

A request to pay in instalments – even before the outcome of her appeal – was refused.  When she asked whether the firm often deals with people who find themselves caught in the gap between the four-week payment deadline and an appeal decision, she claims the Jacobs Enforcement advisor acknowledged that it happened “a lot”.

“So I’m now possibly facing a CCJ [county court judgement]  over the fact that I had a [traffic] ticket for £35.   My credit is amazing, but now I’ve got the threat of [it] being impacted because I can’t pay £190 in four weeks.

“Surely there is something disgustingly wrong with forcing people to pay the full amount upfront.” Jessica added.

In response to Jessica’s situation, Peter Bell, highway regulation manager at Lancashire County Council, said: “Councils use the DVLA to obtain the contact address for PCNs – and we use the vehicle registration details, which in this case, [were] not updated correctly at the time of the penalty charge notice being issued.

“In this case, the customer can get in touch with the Traffic Enforcement Centre (TEC) and ask for consideration of resetting the ticket to the start of the whole process. However, this is ultimately at the discretion of TEC.

“Unfortunately, until we hear from the Traffic Enforcement Centre, we are unable to take any further action on this case.

“However, if the customer does not want to follow this procedure, we are happy to instruct the enforcement agent to allow a payment plan.

“We are also reviewing the concerns highlighted over our automated phone line, which can be contacted on 0300 123 6713, option 3.”

The LDRS also approached Jacobs Enforcement for comment, but had not received a response before publication.