IN BRIEF
Westminster City Council, in the heart of London, has issued more than 5,000 fixed penalty notices to dockless e-bike hire operators for badly parked bikes since the start of the 2026-27 financial year, compared with 1,259 over the whole of the previous year. Operators have been charged just over £300,000 in fines and removal fees, and more than 1,000 bikes have been seized this year. At the current rate, the council could reach 9,648 fines by the end of the financial year, seven times more than last year. The Labour opposition says the effort still falls short.
In central London, parking a shared e-bike now comes at the cost of thousands of fines. The figures were presented to a Westminster council sub-committee and reported on 13 October by the Local Democracy Reporting Service, in The Standard.
More than 5,000 fines for shared bikes since the start of the financial year
Since the start of the 2026-27 financial year, Westminster has issued more than 5,000 Fixed Penalty Notices to e-bike operators for badly parked bikes, compared with 1,259 the previous year. The total of fines and removal fees charged to these operators is just over £300,000, and more than 1,000 bikes have been seized this year where they were obstructing the way or posing a safety problem.
At the current rate, the council could issue nearly 10,000 fines, 9,648 to be exact, by the end of the financial year, a sevenfold increase.
Enforcement focused on around twenty hotspots, mostly in the West End
The sub-committee heard that enforcement is concentrated mainly on around twenty hotspots for badly parked bikes, many of them in the West End and St James’s. All of the council’s enforcement officers have been trained to issue these fines, and the Local Democracy Reporting Service says two officers deal specifically with seizures. Caroline Sargent, the councillor responsible for enforcement, explains where the removals are concentrated:
“Sometimes hundreds of bikes are really seriously blocking the road, going into the road. So that is where the main seizure action is taking place, but the enforcement action is taking place in every ward.”
Caroline Sargent, Cabinet Member for Enforcement, Westminster City Council
The opposition wants more, Westminster council prepares new agreements
For Ellie Ormsby, Leader of the Labour opposition on the council, the seizures amount to “around six bikes a day”, which, in a city where e-bikes are so prevalent, “barely scratches the surface”.
The council acknowledges that it needs more parking bays, to keep up with demand and to make up for the problematic locations it has removed. A council note (Policy and Scrutiny Cabinet Member Update) states that its officers are also drafting revised versions of the collaboration agreements that bind Westminster to the operators, with stronger data-sharing and transparency requirements, clarified operating rules and tougher penalties for operators that do not cooperate.
