Met Police has wasted 1,600 days on fighting LTN fines from councils since 2020 as figures reveal forces across the country face three times as many LTN fines per year since the pandemic
- The Met says the majority of LTN fines are issued to undercover cars
- The force confirmed that cops are on the hook for the LTN fines
- It said that it’s had to spent 12,668 hours fighting the fines
The Metropolitan Police has revealed it has wasted 1,600 days fighting council-issued fines for violating Low Traffic Neighbourhood (LTN) laws since 2020.
More than half of the 54,000 road fines issued to the Met since 2020 were for LTN-related offences, according to data requested by The Times under freedom of information laws.
Last year alone, it was forced to deal with 20,000 penalty charges, up from less than 6,000 in 2019.
The Met said that because each fine takes about 25 minutes to process, it has spent 12,668 hours fighting the fines, the equivalent of nearly 1,600 days.
While LTN laws state that cops are allowed to go through restricted areas when dealing with emergencies, the force said that the majority of the fines came from its use of unmarked vehicles.
More than half of the 54,000 road fines issued to the Met since 2020 were for LTN-related offences
The Met also confirmed that officers are personally liable for the fines if they cannot prove they were acting as part of a police response
One of the biggest issuers of LTN-related fines was Lambeth Council, which has one of the highest rates of crime in the UK.
The Met did not receive a single ticket for an LTN offence in the borough in 2019, but since Lambeth introduced five LTNs in 2020, the force had to wade through 2,635 offences.
Though it was able to successfully appeal more than 1,000 of the tickets, it is not currently known why the other 1,600 tickets were not withdrawn.
The Met also confirmed that officers are personally liable for the fines if they cannot prove they were acting as part of a police response, suggesting that in Lambeth officers have had to pay up to £200,000 in fines for going through LTNs while working.
A police source told The Times: ‘We’ve been told for years that paperwork was going to end and we’d be out on the streets permanently. But we’re still doing more paperwork than ever. It wastes a lot of our time.’
‘We should have some way of just going back via commander level saying ‘this is a list of the tickets you’ve sent — they are police vehicles, full stop’.’
While some boroughs appear to be trying to increase the number of fines they issue, others are trying to cut down on the number of LTN penalties they issue to the police.
In the two years following the introduction of ten LTNs across Hackney in 2020, the council wrongly issued nearly 2,000 tickets to the police.
After the authority started adding exemptions for unmarked police vehicles, that number fell to 310 last year and 52 in the first six months of 2023.
A spokesperson for Hackney Council said: ‘All our LTNs exempt marked police vehicles automatically and unmarked vehicles on application.
‘At present Hackney council has exemptions in place for approximately 200 unmarked police vehicles and we welcome further applications from the Met should they need to add more.’
Rezina Chowdhury, deputy leader of Lambeth council, said: ‘Our LTNs are designed in collaboration with the emergency services, and with their support.
We use camera enforcement rather than bollards specifically because they enable emergency vehicles to access traffic-free routes.
‘Emergency vehicles are exempt from enforcement and no fines are issued to unmarked vehicles where the details have been shared with us.
‘However, it’s important that emergency vehicles follow the rules of the road when not responding to an emergency to reduce their danger to other road users.’
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