Thousands of drivers sent £70 fine each after IT failure

Drivers have been slapped with 500,000 fines for Dartford Crossing breaches in one month amid an IT failure. Drivers have to pay £2.50 to use the Dartford Crossing, after changes from Transport for London and Labour Party Mayor Sadiq Khan.

Drivers who fail to pay the standard £2.50 charge can be fined £70 which must be paid within 28 days. Failure to pay the penalty can see the fine increase to £105. The figures obtained in a Freedom of Information (FOI) request found that in April this year, 512,000 fines were issued.

And a further 492,000 were handed out in May. After National Highways switched IT providers, drivers needed to set up the autopayments again, Fleet News reported. A National Highways spokesperson said: “When we changed providers for the Dart Charge Service at the end of July 2023, due to banking regulations all of our 1.7 million account holders had to re-validate their card details in order for us to continue taking payments for crossings made.

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“All account holders were contacted in advance and prompted online, and to date 770,000 account holders have successfully updated their accounts.” The issue seems to be caused by Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras wrongly identifying vehicles with similar number plates.

It follows a BBC investigation into problems with the Dart Charge system caused by switching to a new provider in July 2023. National Highways said: “In a minority of circumstances, penalty charges are issued in error. Where this happens, the charge will be cancelled as soon as a customer contacts us to let us know they are not the registered keeper of the vehicle."

A National Highways spokesperson said: “In some cases, manual checks are needed to make sure crossing details are accurate. This can delay those crossings being visible on the website. However, customers can still pay for these crossings at any time up to midnight the following day, whether the crossing is visible online or not.

“The easiest option for customers is to pay every time and on time. We’ve made this easy by offering different ways to pay which suit everyone’s needs. We want to make paying as stress-free as possible and limit any additional admin for our customers.

“In a minority of circumstances, penalty charges are issued in error. Where this happens, the charge will be cancelled as soon as a customer contacts us to let us know they are not the registered keeper of the vehicle."