More than £250,000 has been paid in Dart Charge fines by drivers who only needed to pay the crossing toll charge, it has been revealed.

7,424 fines of up to £70 were settled by motorists seemingly unaware that they only needed to pay the £2.50 crossing fee, according to a Freedom of Information Act request.

If all of these notices were paid at the discounted rate of £35, the amount collected would be £259,840 – but with some paying the full £70 fine this is likely to be more.

However, many of these motorists did not need to pay this as Dart Charge offered motorists being fined for the first time two weeks to pay the road user charge, instead of the fine.

The revelations follow a Freedom of Information Act request made by Dartsave.co.uk – a firm which gives road users extra time to pay their toll.

Chris Billing, director of Dartsave, said: “It’s another in a long line of issues we’ve encountered with Dart Charge. Questions should be raised about them issuing 601,256 PCNs in the first five months of going live as that’s a huge amount.

"If the system worked perfectly, it would be more understandable but in our opinion it is deeply flawed."

Over £1m has been collected from penalty charge notices in its first six months of operations, but this is a fraction of the £22.8m they are still yet to collect from the fines.

Dartsave have now launched a petition called Dart Rage to “call for the Government to demand a refund from Sanef Operations Ltd, who will be paid £367 million to run the Dart Charge system over a ten year period,” according to Mr Billing.

He added: “We believe the systemic issues mean it will never operate properly and should therefore be scrapped and replaced as soon as possible.”