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The UK's 'most lucrative' double-box junction generates more than £1,800 a day from trapped drivers. During the first eight months of this year, the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames issued 6,568 penalty charge notices (PCNs) for the junction. Made up of two yellow boxes, the junction on Kingston Road causes 27 penalties to be issued on average per day. Overall, it has cost drivers a total of £451,405 in PCNs between January and August this year, according to the Freedom of Information Act inquiry. Roland Head, 75, who has run The Real Butchers for 42 years, which sits next to the junction, described it as a 'cash cow'. 'It's not about traffic control,' he told the Times. 'The local government isn't going to change anything because it's making them money,' he said. The two yellow boxes between Elm Road and Westbury Road have been in place since 2015, but fines were not introduced until five years later. The council has since added a bollard in front of The Real Butchers to stop motorists from driving onto the pavement to try and avoid a penalty. Drivers must not enter a yellow box until they can drive through it without having to stop, states the Highway Code. However, many believe the fines can be unfair, as people may have to stop in the box unexpectedly due to someone else's driving. New Malden ambulance depot is based less than half a mile from the junction, where ambulances regularly get stuck behind cars unwilling to move into the yellow box in fear of getting fines. The yellow 'criss-cross' boxes are designed to keep traffic flowing through busy junctions, with drivers not allowed to enter a box unless the exit is clear and there's enough space to clear the box without stopping inside the yellow lines. The fine for stopping in a yellow box junction is £160 in all London boroughs, but reduced to £80 if paid in the first 14 days. Outside London, it is £70 reduced to £35. There is no fixed minimum time a car must be stopped in a yellow box to be issued with a PCN. The council said that all the money generated from the fines is used for essential traffic and parking management as well as other priority transport-related initiatives. A Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames council spokesman said: 'These two yellow box junctions are in place to prevent traffic from blocking each junction, and to allow vehicles to enter and exit side roads, and to allow clear sight of pedestrians and cyclists to motorists who are turning right into Elm Road, to improve safety for all road and pavement users.' The council also disputes the claim that the junction has the highest revenue in the UK, saying that it is two boxes, rather than one. Between 2022 and 2024 the number of Penalty Charge Notices (PCNs) for ‘moving traffic offences’ – which include yellow boxes as well as other infringements – in London increased by 8.5 per cent to 3.45million or about one for every three residents. London and Cardiff were the only parts of the UK where drivers could be fined for yellow box offences until the Government introduced new legislation in 2022, which enables all councils across England to apply for enforcement powers. Data provided by English councils in response to FoI requests by the RAC showed that just 36 yellow boxes outside London and Cardiff were enforced last year. However, these locations triggered 32,748 PCNs. The RAC analysis found Manchester City Council issued the most box junction-related PCNs, with 13,130 for six box junctions across its network. This brought in £446,706, which was nearly half of all yellow box-related revenue outside London and Cardiff. Kent's Medway Council raised the second highest amount at £145,162 after handing out 4,433 PCNs for the five yellow boxes it enforced. It was followed by Buckinghamshire Council, which received £139,798 for 3,618 fines. At the other end of the scale, Gloucestershire County Council issued just 30 yellow box PCNs, raising £945, while Leeds City Council handed out 50 fines, resulting in £605 being paid. Only a fraction of yellow box fines are appealed by drivers, but the proportion of attempts that are upheld can be as high as 87 per cent in the case of Medway Council. RAC senior policy officer Rod Dennis said a yellow box, which generates a small number of fines indicates it is 'working as it should', and must be the ambition for councils rather than using them as a 'revenue-raising opportunity'. He said: 'Very few people set out to deliberately flout the rules and get fined. 'The large number of penalties being dished out over a small number of locations and in a short space of time should send alarm bells ringing in council offices. 'It's vital box junctions are used in the correct places and are only as big as absolutely necessary. 'They must be fairly set up so that drivers don't find themselves stranded through no fault of their own.' Chartered engineer Sam Wright was commissioned by the RAC to analyse the 100 boxes across London and Cardiff which were responsible for generating the most fines in 2019. A report published last year showed he found 98 were larger than necessary for their role in preventing queuing vehicles from blocking the path of crossing traffic. The average box was 50 per cent bigger than needed, according to the research.
