Cambridgeshire County Council has spent more than £31,800 defending a legal challenge to the Mill Road bus gate, which has been in place since March.

The bus gate restricts access to the Mill road bridge to all non-exempt vehicles, with a £70 fine being issued to non-compliant drivers. The restriction does not apply to buses, cyclists, taxis or blue-badge vehicles.

The measure has been unpopular with some local residents, who have launched two legal challenges against the plan.

While the first of these succeeded in August 2024, the council relaunched the plan, prompting a second challenge. This challenge was dismissed in July, meaning that the scheme will continue.

A Freedom of Information request from the Local Democracy Reporting Service has revealed that Cambridgeshire County Council spent £38,817.10 on legal costs while defending the challenge, although it is now seeking to claim back £10,000 of these.

“The county council is claiming £10,000 in legal costs (which is the maximum we are able to recover in this case),” said a council spokesperson.

“As a local authority, we want to protect taxpayers’ money and will therefore seek to cover the costs that the council has had to make to defend this claim,” they continued.

The bus gate challenge is not the only issue to be faced by Cambridgeshire County Council. In May, Varsity revealed that Clare Hall spent over £21,000 on opposing the proposed Cambourne to Cambridge busway, which would run past the College’s grounds. 

At the time, the College said that the construction would be “highly intrusive and detrimental to the College environment for its students, academics and many visiting academics”.

In November 2024, Varsity reported that protesters had blockaded the bridge to prevent council workers from installing barriers on the route, with one person chaining themself to a work van.