Toll Bridge Camera System Fines Driver 271 Miles Away, DVLA Handed Over His Data on a Misread Plate

Graham Parsons lives in Plymouth, Devon. In early June he got a letter demanding payment for an unpaid toll crossing at the Warburton Toll Bridge, which connects Cheshire and Greater Manchester, according to BBC Politics North West.

The problem: Parsons had never been near the bridge. It sits 271 miles from his house.

"I put my Sherlock Holmes hat on because I didn't realise that I'd ever been near the bridge," Parsons told the BBC. "So I was quite perturbed and annoyed."

He appealed. The automated number plate recognition camera, or ANPR, had misread his plate. It differed from the actual vehicle photographed by a single character. One letter or number, and a man in Devon gets a bill for a bridge crossing in Cheshire.

Two weeks after that first letter got sorted, Parsons received a second one, for a different alleged crossing in April. Same story. Wrong car, wrong plate, wrong person entirely.

The DVLA Handed Over His Details on a Bad Match

To chase Parsons for a toll he never owed, the parking enforcement company Excel Parking obtained his personal details through the DVLA, based entirely on that single misread character.

Parsons only got the mess cleared up after filing a subject access request with Excel Parking. The charges were then cancelled.

The DVLA acknowledged the error. "We're sorry for any distress caused," a spokesperson said, adding that Excel Parking "confirmed the notices were issued in error and has cancelled the charges."

A government agency released a private citizen's information based on an automated camera's guesswork, with the fix only coming because the guy on the receiving end knew to file a formal data request. Most people don't.

He's Not the Only One

Parsons said he found a Facebook group full of people who had run into the same problem with the bridge, and that group is what helped him figure out how to fight the charge. He called himself "lucky" to know the process. "I have a lot more sympathy for local people that have to cross that bridge on multiple occasions," he said.

Russell Barton, from Lowton, is one of those locals. He crosses the bridge regularly visiting his elderly parents. In June he got a charge notice for a March crossing he says he already paid for.

"Luckily I don't often delete emails, and sure enough there's the receipt that I paid the £1 crossing on the day they say I didn't," Barton told the BBC.

His verdict: "not fit for purpose."

The Toll Went Up After the Booths Came Down

The bridge used to cost 12p per crossing when manned toll booths handled it. After refurbishment work, the booths were pulled and replaced with the ANPR camera system, and the price rose to £1, according to the BBC's reporting.

Barton isn't arguing against paying for infrastructure. "I appreciate they spent a lot of money on the bridge and that needs to be paid for somehow," he said. But he called the way charges escalate "not fair" and "not proportionate." His concern is a fair one. Swapping a human toll-taker for an automated camera removed a built-in error check, a person who could visually confirm a plate, while the price also went up. That's a reasonable objection independent of any political lens, and it's the kind of trade-off, less accountability alongside a higher price, that ought to draw scrutiny whether the system is public or private.

What Peel Ports Says

Peel Ports, which operates the bridge, acknowledged "some genuine customer experience issues" but said the evidence gathered so far does "not indicate a systemic failure of the system," per the BBC.

That's a defensible position if these are isolated misreads. But two documented wrongful charges to the same out-of-area driver in the same reporting cycle, plus a paid-and-still-billed local resident, plus an active Facebook group of similarly affected drivers, suggests a pattern beyond isolated errors. Whether Peel Ports or Excel Parking will publish crossing-error rates, or whether regulators will require it, remains an open question. Neither company has said how many total misreads the system has generated since the camera replaced the toll booths.