It’s emerged that almost one in 10 drivers caught out by London’s weekend congestion charge have had their fines quashed.

More than 34,000 of the 387,174 penalty charges issued during 2021 have been overturned, according to figures released to The Daily Telegraph after a Freedom of Information request.T

The paper says the findings come after London Mayor Sadiq Khan faced criticism over his decision to make the seven-days-a-week running of the charge permanent. It was originally brought in as a temporary measure.

TfL said that half of the quashed fines followed representations when there had been a genuine error by the driver.

Mr Khan is standing by his decision to charge motorists to drive in the capital on the weekends, which was introduced in May 2020 to help prop up the finances of the capital’s public transport authority.

The Telegraph’s figures on quashed fines shed light on how drivers were caught out by the charge being introduced on Saturday and Sunday despite an extensive marketing campaign by City Hall.

Between July and December 2020, between 8% and 10% of vehicles entering the congestion charging zone on the weekend received a penalty charge notice, compared with around 5% on a weekday. The figures fell in 2021 but almost double the proportion of drivers were being caught out on Saturday and Sunday compared with the rest of the week.

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