Nearly 70,000 motorists in Kent have been slapped with £90 fines for driving into London’s ultra-low emission zone (ULEZ) before its latest expansion.

Transport for London (TfL) is estimated to have made more than £6 million in eligible charges from those driving between the county and the capital in non-compliant vehicles.

The ULEZ is an emission-based charging scheme in London that requires certain polluting vehicles adjudged to have high emissions driving within the zone to pay a daily charge of £12.50.

Failure to comply with the rules sees motorists hit with a penalty charge notice (PCN) of £180, reduced to £90 if paid within 14 days.

It has operated since April 2019 but initially only covered the same area of central London as the Congestion Charge before being expanded in October 2021 to all areas within the North and South Circular Roads.

Two months ago it was controversially expanded again to include the greater London boroughs, including Bexley and Bromley, up to the borders with Dartford and Sevenoaks.

Now a KentOnline freedom of information (FOI) request to TfL has revealed in the year before its latest extension, between August 29, 2022, and August 29, 2023, a total of 69,598 PCNs were dished out to drivers with vehicles registered in Kent.

By area, Medway motorists were most frequently stung with 15,929 fines amassed, followed closely by Dartford with 10,240 and Gravesham with 6,761.

More specifically, those with a DA1 postcode were hit the hardest with 4,824 notices, followed by those living in ME7 (3,654) and ME4 (3,499).

Before this year’s expansion, residents living on the Dartford-Bexley border were concerned as many streets in the Kent borough straddle the divide meaning entering the ULEZ can be “unavoidable”.

Homeowners in Bowmans Road, who have a DA1 postcode, face the choice of turning left into Dartford Heath or right into Crayford, Bexley, so one misdirection and they could be slapped with a bill.

Last year, people living on the road said the expansion would cost them £12.50 just to drive to their local Sainsbury’s a mile away in Crayford.

Edward Hawkes said: “We are not a London borough, yet Sadiq Khan wants us to pay for the ULEZ. It is another tax London is trying to give everyone."

The parts of Kent which saw the fewest number of PCNs issued were perhaps unsurprisingly mainly in the east of the county – Dover with 2,695 and Folkestone and Hythe saw 2,168.

But the motorists who are complying with the rules more than others are those travelling from Tunbridge Wells with only 2,155 fines issues.

The figures include penalties which may have been issued to the same vehicle more than once and so do not show how many individual drivers have been caught.

A TfL spokesman explained how the firm issues the fines. They said: “When we issue a PCN the notices are sent to the registered keeper of the vehicle as held by the DVLA.

“The address to which the penalty is sent does not necessarily indicate that that is where the driver resides.

“For example, we issue PCNs to hire and lease companies based in London and we do not know where the driver, who incurred the penalty, resides.”

The government body estimates ULEZ could generate £200 million a year in revenue for the first two years following the expansion on August 29 although it will decline once compliance increases, with no profits expected by 2026 and 2027.

Any money made from the scheme must be reinvested back into the capital’s transport network.

The zone was made bigger despite a continued fightback from bordering Conservative-led councils who launched a failed High Court appeal against the Labour mayor’s plans.

In response, the mayor of London Sadiq Khan defended the “pollution penalty”, maintaining he needed to make a “difficult but vital” decision to address the capital's dirty air and curb deaths and public health issues associated with it.

“The expansion of the policy is not to raise revenue,” he explained. “In fact when you include the set up cost of the ULEZ after a couple of years no money is made at all because of the need for vehicles to be compliant.”

Over the next two years, he pledged for any money made net to be invested back into public transport in outer London.

But despite this, the major has faced criticism that the charge penalises the poor who can’t afford to upgrade their car and those living in areas with bad public transport.

A petition has since been launched by a Kent resident calling on transport secretary Mark Harper to use the law to scrap the scheme.

Kent County Council previously refused to allow the relevant infrastructure for the project to be installed in the county, saying it would stand by this decision “for as long as there is no mitigation to minimise the impact of the expansion of the scheme on Kent residents”.

Earlier this year, protestors in Orpington and Bromley carried out multiple days of demonstrations, bringing traffic to a standstill at the edge of London to fight against the plans.

In mid-August police said nearly 300 crimes had been recorded against ULEZ cameras, and a 42-year-old man from Sidcup was charged in May with damaging them after an investigation was launched.

Read More: Everything you need to know about ULEZ.

A TfL report published in February, states that ULEZ compliance rates have increased since the October 2021 expansion across inner London with 94% of vehicles driving in the zone now meeting the standards.

There was also an average reduction of 74,000 polluting vehicles and six months on it says it had nearly halved the harmful nitrogen dioxide pollution in central London.