Foreign cars and fake number plates have been blamed for a huge amount of Clean Air Zone fines being written off. Drivers of older vehicles who should pay to enter the zone but don’t are hit with a penalty charge notice, but it has emerged that many are simply not paying these fines.
From April 2024 to September 2025 Bristol City Council wrote off £22 million of unpaid Clean Air Zone fines. Leading councillors faced questions about why so much money owed to the council has not been paid, during a meeting of the transport policy committee on Thursday, March 19.
Green Councillor Ed Plowden, committee chair, said: “An awful lot of those cars, we just cannot trace the owners. Some of them are from other countries and there does seem to be some persistent offenders. It may be that we’re seeing fake number plates or other things.
“Somebody in my ward [Windmill Hill] had a car registered to his address and had bailiffs turn up at his front door, which nobody wants. And it turns out that he doesn’t own that car and has never owned that car. So there’s a lot of people doing all sorts of nefarious things to buck the system.”
The figures were revealed in a recent report to the strategy and resources policy committee.
REPORTS BY ALEX SEABROOK, LOCAL DEMOCRACY REPORTER