A COUPLE has launched a landmark legal case to overturn controversial bus lane fines that could open the floodgates to hundreds of similar challenges.

Geoffrey and Dawn Bonelle are taking on Glasgow City Council over the camera in Nelson Mandela Place which has raked in £1.3m from motorists in a single year.

They claim the original £30 fine – imposed after Mr Bonelle, 67, drove through bus gate in October, 2014 – was unfair due to a lack signs illustrating the ban.

The couple are among thousands of people caught out by the camera, which caught 50,000 drivers in six months.

It is the city's most 'productive' camera, catching more than 49,000 motorists in six months - ten times the next most 'popular' lane.

Mrs Bonelle, 59, said: “We want our day in court to see if the sheriff can make the council prove that these signs were not only legal but were in the correct place and correct height.

“They have made a lot of money from this bus gate. We hope this case would open the doors for thousands of other drivers.”

Motorists have been hit with nearly £3 million in penalty charges for driving through the gate at Nelson Mandela Place in the city centre in just over a year.

Unlike speed-camera fines, which go the UK Treasury, those from the bus lane cameras are retained by the city council for transport improvements.

Greg Whyte, head of Jones Whyte Law’s civil court department, said if the court found in their favour it opened up avenues for others to make legal challenges.

He said: “The crux of their case is that area is not properly signposted. If a sheriff at Glasgow Sheriff Court rules that they are correct, it opens the floodgates for those who have one of these tickets to say, they didn’t see it either, and had no reason to believe it was a bus lane.”

The Bonelles faced having their family car seized after the original fine ballooned to more than £274 while the couple were locked in a dispute with the council over the fixed penalty notice.

In November, an arrestment order on their Dacia Stepway Sandero, worth around £5,500, which the couple own, was withdrawn.

The couple relied on their car to transport their son, who has suffered brain damage, to and from a residential centre for autistic adults in Lochgelly, Fife.

The Bonelles have now paid off the £274 to try and recoup it from Glasgow City Council through the small claims court, and they believe it could become a test case which will allow others to claim their fines are unfair.

In August, it emerged motorists had forked out £1.3 million in fines after 70,000 charge notices issued to car drivers between the end of June and the end of July last year.

The council said 44,000 of the fines had been paid to date.

Many of these had been reduced from £60 to £30 because they were settled within two weeks.

The council then warned outstanding fines would be pursued, and passed to a debt recovery agency if necessary. If all are paid, that would produce another £1.5m.

Bus lane fines paid across Glasgow totalled £1.6 million in 2014 and £1.2 million in the first half of 2015. This compares to nearly £3.3m in 2013.

Mrs Bonelle, 59, said they decided to pay “under duress” because they were worried that the council might try to make a claim on other possessions, including their home.

“We want to claim the money back because we feel they can’t prove and haven’t proved the signs were not only legal, but put on the right place, at the right height.

The couple say they believe some adjustment were made to signage in the area in November in response to the issue.

“If the signs are either not legal, or not correct, or against the regulations and they can prove they didn’t put the signs right till November, then anyone who has been fined until November when they changed it would be entitled to their money back,” said Mrs Bonelle.

They said they hit an initial snag when told by Glasgow Sheriff Court that a sheriff had declined their application for a small claims hearing because they had not exhausted the city council’s fine appeal procedure.

But the couple say that they had, and are now making a new application to the court.

“We have been fighting this for 16 months, of course we have been through the appeals procedure, we are sick of the appeals procedure,” said Mrs Bonelle.

“We are not saying there weren’t signs, just that are unclear. There were too many signs on one post for a man in a car to read all at once, they were too low down, and they were hidden by a traffic light.”

A Glasgow City Council spokesman said: “Numerous signs and variable messaging have been in place to alert drivers to the bus gate at Nelson Mandela Place since June 2014.

“Since then the number of fixed penalty notices issued on this location has dropped significantly as people are choosing not to drive through what is now a very well-known and publicised bus gate.”