About one million motorists who drive through the Dartford Crossing could be at risk of being fined, figures show. This comes after National Highways changed its service provider for the Dart Charge back in July 2023.

Those using the crossing were told to update their account details. But out of 1.7 million account holders, only 770,000 successfully updated their details as requested, says Kent Live.

A National Highways spokesperson said: “When we changed providers for the Dart Charge Service at the end of July 2023, due to banking regulations a large proportion 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.

“All account holders were contacted in advance and prompted online, and to date 770,000 account holders have successfully updated their accounts. The Dartford Crossing has around 4.5 million crossings per month and the vast majority of crossings are paid without issue.”

However, one Highways News reader has a different story to tell.

“I recently tried to access my Dart Charge account and could not,” he told us. “It took several emails to confirm it was closed, but there was no letter, call, or email – there was contact whatsoever. As a consequence I’ve had the most miserable experience trying to recover the funds that were already in the account, or get the closure reversed.

“The only thing they did was ask me for the account number and the registration numbers of any cars linked to the account. I did that but all I got was a terse reply to inform me all I could do was re-sign up for a new account. To my mind,” he continued “this is surely theft or fraud. To not contact us by any means whatsoever shows intent to deceive account holders in this way and rob us of our money.”

Dart Charge are cordially invited to respond to Highways News and we will pass the communication onto the aggrieved customer.