Penalty Charge Notices: drivers warned about yellow box junction fines

Councils are set to be provided with new powers for enforcing driving offences, with the RAC warning this could result in unfair charges being issued.

Being a motorist is pretty expensive at the moment. Even with the fuel duty cut announced in the Spring Statement, the reality is that filling up your vehicle has rarely been quite so painful financially.

However, there are warnings of yet more money worries ahead for drivers, in the shape of unfairly issued penalty charge notices by councils.

How are the rules changing?

At the moment, only a very small number of councils are able to enforce moving traffic offences.

These cover things like ignoring ‘no entry’, ‘no left’ and ‘no right’ turn signals, as well as stopping in yellow boxes.

Currently, it’s only local authorities in London and Cardiff ‒ as well as the police obviously ‒ that have the power to issue penalty charge notices when drivers break these rules.

This will change from 1 June, when councils will be able to apply for the power to issue these notices.

Now, on the face of it, this seems like a good thing. After all, these signs are only effective if drivers follow them, and they are less likely to if they know there will be no consequences for ignoring them.

The trouble is, it’s not quite as simple as that.

This yellow box makes no sense

According to research from the RAC, there are an awful lot of yellow box junctions that have been poorly designed, to the point that drivers can become trapped on them ‒ and therefore liable to be issued with a penalty charge through no fault of their own.

The RAC said it had seen cases of junctions being installed in completely the wrong places, boxes that were far larger than necessary ‒ increasing the chances of trapping drivers ‒ and boxes where the end-points are obstructed by buildings and the like. 

This means that drivers have no real way of being able to assess whether there is sufficient space beyond the junction for their vehicle to fit into.

There is also the issue of general maintenance ‒ there are some yellow box junctions that have been very poorly maintained, making it difficult for drivers to see where they start and end.

What’s the point of this yellow box?

It’s not just a question of putting the yellow boxes in the wrong place, but also what they are even being used for.

The RAC commissioned Sam Wright, a chartered engineer who was formerly responsible for the design and approval of yellow boxes on the Transport for London road network, to write a report on how they are enforced in the capital.

And what became clear from that report is that there are serious gaps in the official guidance for councils over the point of yellow boxes in the first place; there’s no steer on their purpose, how to design them in relation to vehicle movements, and no information on how they should be maintained and enforced.

It’s essentially a lottery, which could lead to even more confusion once councils have the power to issue charges for apparent driver infringements.
 

Raking it in

It’s worth pointing out that penalty charge notices for these infringements can represent quite the moneyspinner for cash-strapped councils.

A freedom of information request a couple of years ago from the RAC found that between 2016 and 2019 councils in London and Cardiff issued around 1.3 million penalty charge notices, which brought in a whopping £86 million.

In 2018/19 alone the councils brought in more than £31 million, a staggering amount of cash. Now extrapolate that out beyond simply London and Cardiff, and you’ll get a sense of just how much money councils up and down the country could be set to bring in by taking on the power of issuing charge notices.

A waste of time and money

This situation is concerning for a host of reasons. There’s no question that some councils will view these new powers as an opportunity to boost their coffers and be a little too eager to dish out charges.

If they also happen to have dodgily designed box junctions, which are effectively impossible to negotiate properly, then it is inevitable that some drivers will be on the receiving end of what the RAC describes as an “avalanche” of unfair charges.

Thankfully, as we have detailed here on loveMONEY, it is possible to appeal against a penalty charge notice so that you don’t end up out of pocket.

Ultimately, there will be some who are unwilling to go through the time and effort required and simply cough up the charges, even if they are unfair.

Even if drivers do appeal, that means councils spending far more time having to deal with those appeals rather than getting on with their regular duties, while the numbers involved could lead to a more protracted process.

It’s a thoroughly unsatisfactory prospect, and completely unnecessary. Drivers end up out of pocket, councils end up spending their time investigating appeals, and all because some box junctions haven’t been thought through properly.

When they are designed and placed properly, yellow box junctions can be effective and it’s obviously important that they are enforced properly. But this situation threatens to be anything but proper.