Car-hating Khan's fast one: When the speed limit on the A20 near Kent was sneakily cut from 70mph to 40mph, 100,000 speeding tickets were issued. But even when a campaign proved it was illegal, the mayor didn't want to know

Sofa salesman Jamie Foster, 30, was driving home in his Ford Fiesta when he was caught – not once but four times.

Consultant anaesthetist Dr Subha Bagchi, 52, was on his way to the hospital where he worked in his Lexus when he was nabbed at the same spot – again, four times.

And Coleen Blackburn, 50, who has long-term health problems and was driving her Mini a little tentatively following an accident, was snapped speeding there too. Just the once – but her husband was caught the very next week.

All the above had clean licences. None of them saw the small signs warning drivers that the long-standing 70mph limit had been reduced to 40mph.

Yet all four were sent speeding tickets after being snapped by cameras installed in 2023 at the behest of Transport for London (TfL) on the east-bound A20 near Sidcup, just before it leaves south-east London and enters Kent.

All feared they could lose their jobs, or – in Mrs Blackburn's case – her otherwise already restricted mobility. And they are just a tiny sample of the vast number of drivers – thought to total 100,000 – caught at the same spot.

They are now at the centre of a growing scandal which critics say utterly shames London Mayor Sadiq Khan, a politician long considered hostile to motorists.

While most victims simply accepted the £100 fine demanded by post, plus the three points on their licence – your reporter, it should be said, included – some, outraged by the temporary speed signs that they considered too small to notice, united over Facebook, and fought back.

The measuring tape shows the sign is 45cm wide when it should be 90cm 

Jamie Foster with his mother Shirley. Mr Foster received four speeding tickets over the Christmas week on the A20 after the speed was illegally reduced by TfL 

A vehicle lost control on the duel carriageway during heavy rain, spun around impacting a van driving onto the forecourt

So it was that, in September, one brave soul, John Abbott, 78, contested his January 2024 speeding conviction at Kingston-upon-Thames Crown Court, risking massive costs.

As a former employee of Bexley council, he had experience of introducing temporary traffic orders and believed TfL had not done it correctly on the A20.

To the delight of campaigners, Judge Sarah Bergstrom agreed and quashed his conviction. 

She ruled 'the temporary speed restriction was unlawful' from the very start, and that 'no properly directed magistrates' court could safely convict' in such a situation.

Only after probing from the judge had it emerged that TfL had not properly authorised the speed limit reduction – and its legal department had been told as much as long ago as 2024. 

Yet Mayor Khan is rejecting formal calls for an inquiry, and TfL is refusing to overturn the convictions, wipe licences clean, or refund the estimated 100,000 drivers who have been fined.

Not to mention the additional insurance costs, lost jobs, defaulted mortgages, broken marriages, and even an alleged attempted suicide. One man is said to have received 11 tickets and 33 penalty points.

The Mayor and TfL insist that the blizzard of tickets, and fines, are all justified in the interests of 'safety'. 

And while the mayor last year said 'let's wait and see what the Crown Court judge concludes' – implying ongoing prosecutions might be halted after the ruling – he and TfL are refusing to budge. 

No surprise there, you might say. After all, this is the mayor who has imposed 20mph speed limits in huge areas of the capital, plus costly 'Ulez' charges for those with older vehicles.

But it should be said that, in this case, there is no doubt safety was an issue on this stretch of the A20 that slopes down towards a BP garage. 

Sir Sadiq Khan, mayor of London, poses for a photograph following a Bloomberg Television interview at City Hall

Videos captured prior to the sudden introduction of the speed reduction show heavy rain sheeting across the two Kent-bound lanes, on occasion sending cars aquaplaning from the fast lane and smashing into the garage. 

One crash caused £100,000 of damage. It was only by sheer good fortune that no one was killed.

What the Daily Mail can reveal today, however, is that online records show Bromley Council has spent ten years calling for TfL to clear the drains to stop the flooding.

Yet this did not happen, for the drains became increasingly blocked. Plaintive pleas from the garage were simply ignored too.

Prominent among the victims is energy firm businessman John Dunlop, 56, of Chislehurst in south-east London, who – along with Mrs Blackburn – runs the A20 Justice Alliance.

Mr Dunlop was making one of his regular trips to Gatwick airport when caught in his Volvo doing 47mph in the dark at 6am one day in March 2024.

It proved to be the beginning of a 'Kafka-esque' experience involving scores of Freedom of Information requests, multiple approaches to politicians and a forensic scouring of highway guidelines. And it's a nightmare that remains ongoing.

Mr Dunlop says: 'TfL always says the speed restriction was all about 'safety first'. But here's the catch… the aquaplaning issue on the A20 was caused by TfL itself.

'One of the many FoI requests made over this issue shows that TfL's roads contractor, FM Conway, told the council as it sought to address 'a historic drainage problem on the A20 Sidcup bypass at Swanley Services' that the drains had not been cleared properly. 

'That is why it was flooding. TfL caused the problem. Only after ten years did they say it was an "emergency".'

Mr Dunlop has better things to do than squeeze the full truth out of TfL – he has a business to run and children to raise. But he has become an expert in a wide range of obscure fields. 

'I'm appalled I'm now an expert in this,' he says, 'but the Department of Transport traffic signs manual says temporary speed limit signs should be 900mm [a yard] wide, to ensure motorists used to the usual limit see them but TfL was following the guidelines for permanent signs, and they were just 300mm [one foot] wide, sometimes 450mm.

'They're supposed to be on both sides of the road too. But their shrinky-dink signs were almost all only on the left.

'I just wonder if people at TfL even have driving licences, because why put a 300mm sign on a 70mph road? Going at speed, you don't even notice them – particularly when they're two yards into the verge – until you get the nasty police letter.' 

Research by Mr Dunlop and others found that, while the flooding problem on the A20 was first raised by Bromley Council in 2013, TfL only got round to tackling the issue in 2023, when it reduce the speed limit by issuing an 'emergency notice', a procedure that meant no public consultation was needed.

A car passes through a flooded area of the A20 near Ashford in Kent. Storm Chandra brought travel disruption and flooding as strong winds and heavy rain hit much of the UK

Our reluctant expert Mr Dunlop says: 'It was only when John Abbott's case came to Crown Court that the judge pointed out that the requested TfL document saying who was authorised to make traffic orders was dated December 2025.

'She told them to get the document for October 2023, when it actually started – and it did NOT give that authority to Gary Oliver, 'Area Manager South, Asset Operations', who had supposedly authorised the A20 scheme.' 

Mr Dunlop adds that no one will say exactly how many were fined. Around 100,000 is the generally assumed number but, if the initial rate of 7,000 a week was maintained, we could be talking as many as a third of a million.

Most victims, like me, my licence clean for 25 years, meekly paid the £100, took the three points, and shouldered the insurance costs. Fortunately, Mr Dunlop was made of stronger stuff. 

Convinced the signs were too small and too low and increasingly angry at what he discovered, he decided to fight back.

'What started cheesing me off was when, for long months, no one would show the Traffic Order under which I was being prosecuted,' he says. 

'When a body such as TfL uses what are called 'delegated powers', without democratic oversight, you're supposed to at least have openness. 

But they don't, even where maybe 100,000 [people] have been given speeding fines on one small stretch of road.

'It's absurd, Kafka-esque, not to be able to have sight of the law under which you're being prosecuted. But I have to drive, to pick my kids up from school, and for business, so I've spent £10,000 and several years fighting this.'

Mr Dunlop's determination led initially, to his own trial at Bromley magistrates' court in August 2025. 

He denied speeding but was found guilty nonetheless and his fine, costs and 'victim surcharge' shot up from £100 to £800, after the magistrates took TfL's side. 

But he is not alone in staying angry. Our Fiesta driver Mr Foster, 28, from Kent's Isle of Sheppey, was one of the first victims, and he is still suffering.

He usually worked at furniture shop Sofology in Aylesford, Kent, but over Christmas 2023 was asked to work at the firm's Orpington store, near the A20.

In January 2024, he received speeding tickets relating to his rush-hour drives home on December 28, 29, New Year's Eve, and January 2, all at moderate speeds of between 47 and 58 mph.

'It was a massive shock,' says Mr Foster. 'If I just accepted the 12 points threatened I would have lost my licence for six months, and job, because I couldn't get to work. So I sought mitigation, feeling like a criminal, never having gone to court before.

'Bromley magistrates effectively told me, 'You're not an important person, you don't work for the NHS', but they did reduce my points to ten, with £650 [to cover] fine and costs, and a 28-day ban.'

Mother Shirley drove him to work during the ban. But his points still blight his life. 'I applied to be a Volvo salesman last week,' says Mr Foster. 'But you have to drive with customers. When they saw my points they said they couldn't take my application further.'

Mayor Khan has no plans for any inquiry, and TfL says the Crown Court appeal of Mr Abbott does not set a precedent. 

They have no plans to overturn any fines, let alone the insurance and job-loss costs on top. Everyone who wants to challenge them will have to do so on their own account.

This is on top of the mayor vetoing a cross-party motion calling for an independent inquiry into the A20 affair that was carried by 16 votes to three at the London Assembly 18 months ago.

That vote was repeated on Thursday and this time passed by 18 votes to zero, with the Greens abstaining. 

Even Mayor Khan's Labour colleagues endorsed the call, proposed by London Tory Transport spokesman Thomas Turrell, of 'Justice for Londoners'.

Conservative MP for Orpington, Gareth Bacon, whose constituency sits alongside the stretch of the A20, says: 'This is morally outrageous. But it's all part of Sadiq Khan's war on drivers.'

A spokeswoman for the mayor last night said: 'It is incorrect to suggest that the Mayor or TfL misled anybody in relation to these fines, and TfL remain confident that enforcement of the speed limit here was necessary given the safety risks.'

Both the mayor and TfL say 'no wrongdoing was alleged by the court', maintain the speeding reduction orders were lawful.

TfL added last night: 'All drains on TfL roads during this period had an annual clean with additional cleaning requested if conditions required it. TfL enhanced the gully cleansing regime here to six monthly in 2023.'

Tellingly, then, that was a doubling of scheduled drain cleaning only just as the speed reduction was rushed in.

Mr Dunlop and Mrs Blackburn, who saw no 40mph signs while driving at 46.8mph on the way to her son's sports match from her home in Greenwich in January 2024, are to appeal against their convictions together at Crown Court next year.

Mrs Blackburn says: 'I sometimes wish I'd just paid the £100 fine instead of spending years making FoI requests and appeals to the Information Commissioner, and spending £10,000.

'But I want my points removed – and an investigation launched into the whole business.'