Over 11,000 Tyne Tunnel fines have been cancelled

The Tyne Tunnel now has to be paid online before midnight the next day or in advance. Credit: ITV News Tyne Tees

Thousands of fines issued by the Tyne Tunnel operators TT2 have been cancelled.

A new 'cashless' payment system was introduced in November, forcing drivers to pay online rather than through traditional toll booths.

Since the change, over 140,000 penalty notices have been issued, followed by thousands of appeals from angry drivers claiming they were wrongly fined.

Today, TT2 has confirmed many appeals from November and December have now been upheld, cancelling 11,152 fines: "In around 80% of cases these are where mitigating circumstances are cited or TT2 is upholding a higher than usual level of appeals during this transitional phase to help educate and inform customers of the new Open Road Tolling system."

Earlier this month, ITV Tyne Tees spoke to motorists who were campaigning against the payment change. Over 4,000 people signed the petition to get fines wiped, lengthen the pay later period and ask for clearer information to be advertised.

"The payment channels have been operating successfully 24x7 since Go-Live. We have seen a very small number of people who experienced difficulties primarily with 3DS – the new banking security protocol - where we have upheld their appeal.

"In total 231 appeals have been upheld where the customer cited technical difficulties in paying, out of 3.5m journeys made to date. That splits 206 in November and 26 in December," TT2 said.

The operator also added that they do carry out manual checks on top of the automatic registration technology, but not because there are issues: "On a typical day we manually check around 3,000 number plates of the 150,000 camera reads. This is not due to ‘problems’ it is our standard practice to ensure a higher level of accuracy.

"There will always be a level of human error in any system, but we aim to keep this to a minimum. If any errors are made we always cancel the charge and refund the customer."

On top of the 11,000 cancelled fines, around 900 drivers have been contacted for a refund in relation to a technical error by the operator. TT2 says a fix has been implemented so this problem will not happen again.