CROYDON IN CRISIS: Figures from the council show that it has issued refunds to fewer than 1-in-10 of the motorists who were fined for driving through Low Traffic Neighbourhoods which the High Court ruled as ‘unlawful’.
EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Almost three months since Croydon Mayor Jason Perry was ordered by a High Court judge to remove six unlawful Low Traffic Neighbourhood schemes from the borough’s streets, and council officials have so far managed to issue refunds to just 4,182 motorists who were wrongly fined.
That’s fewer than 1-in-10 of the 45,000 Penalty Charge Notices that the council admits to issuing during the period that Perry’s money-spinning LTNs were in place, between March 2024 and their removal by order of the High Court in March 2026.
According to Conrad Hall, Croydon’s finance director, the cost of the refunds is around £7.5million, while the removal of the LTNs will cost between £2.5million to £3million in lost revenues predicted for the coming year.
That adds up to a cool £10million that Jason Perry’s big mouth has cost Croydon Council, and its residents.
Back in March, in handing down his judgement, His Hon Justice Pepperallput the blame squarely on Mayor Perry for public comments he had made.
Mr Gobby: Jason Perry’s public remarks on LTNs have cost Croydon £10m
“Taking the relatively modest benefits of the schemes into account together with the Mayor’s apparent lack of public enthusiasm for the road safety or health case for these schemes, and his clear and repeated comments before and after the vote as to his hands being tied by the budgetary considerations,” the judge said, “I am satisfied on the balance of probabilities that the dominant purpose for these orders making the schemes permanent was the need to safeguard the revenue raised by enforcement.
“Such purpose was unlawful and I therefore quash the orders.”
Having created a £10million black hole in the cash-strapped council’s finances, piss-poor Perry is in no rush to return the unlawful fines to the motorists forced to cough up as a consequence of the unlawful LTNs.
Although the council has the contact details for all 45,000 fine-payers, it has not bothered contacting them pro-actively about the possibility of a refund.
Instead, it has buried a form somewhere in its poorly designed website, possibly in the hope that no one can easily locate it.
And at a council scrutiny meeting in April, Hall admitted that no additional staff were being deployed to handle the refund requests.
So far, the council’s cynical strategy to try to hang on to as much of the unlawful loot from the dodgy fines for as long as possible appears to be working.
How to claim an LTN refund from Croydon Council
- If you think you might be owed a refund on an LTN fine you were charged for in one of the six unlawful LTNs, between March 2024 and March 2026, this is the link to the council’s refund form: https://www.croydon.gov.uk/parking/croydon-low-traffic-neighbourhoods-ltns-penalty-refund-request
Tory Perry’s council looks to have borrowed a chapter out of the playbook used by Labour-run Lambeth when they got turned over on an LTN scheme in West Dulwich last year. Lambeth saved themselves around £1million through a combination of slow processing and “data management issues”.
Lambeth, just as Croydon is now doing, avoided making automatic refunds to the drivers whose records were on its database, but instead required motorists to make a claim, placing the onus on the victims of the unlawful scheme.
Almost six months after Lambeth lost their court case, less than 10% of the estimated £1.5million in fines had been repaid.
A similar picture is emerging in Croydon.
- According to a response to a Freedom of Information request submitted by this website, by June 20, the council had received 5,624 refund requests.
- Of those, 4,182 had been approved for payment.
- A total of £360,962 had been paid in refunds to motorists who had been fined because of Perry’s unlawful LTNs. According to FoI responses, the council’s own estimate of the total amount collected in fines between 2024 and 2026 is £7.2million.
“At this rate, if could be five years before the council coughs up all of its ill-gotten gains from the dodgy LTNs,” a Katharine Street source said today.
Several readers have said that they have been kept waiting weeks, in some cases months, to receive their refund after filling in the council’s form.
Hunt the refund: the council’s website has no obvious link on its front page for the thousands of people who have to claim LTN fine repayment
At the scrutiny meeting, Hall had said that there was no need for any contingency plan, of hiring extra staff to handle the many thousands of claims expected from those who received Penalty Charge Notices for fines of up to £160 a time from Perry’s LTNs.
On the front page of the council website, there’s buttons to direct the public to where they can pay their Council Tax (up 33% since Jason Perry became Mayor), or pay a parking fine (kerching!), or to report a fly tip (in the fly-tipping capital of England).
But there’s nothing to direct anyone to the LTN refund page.
There’s no phone number, no special “fines hotline” to call with any queries, nor any dedicated email address clearly published for residents to pose their questions.
“It’s obvious that the council wants to make it is difficult as possible for people to reclaim those refunds,” the source said. “It’s like trying to get your money back from a loan shark.”
The refunds only apply to fines levied on the six schemes – Albert Road; Dalmally Road; Elmers Road; Holmesdale Road; Parsons Mead; and Sutherland Road – after March 2024. Fines charged on LTNs before that time are not refundable: before Perry made the LTNs permanent, the low-traffic zones had been administered entirely lawfully.
Read more: High Court judge orders end to Croydon’s ‘unlawful’ LTNs
Read more: Council failed to include High Court LTN case on risk register
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ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2026, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for an EIGHTH time in nine years, in Private Eye magazine’s annual round-up of civic cock-ups
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