Transport for London has apologised after mistakenly charging a supercar driver more than £900 in emission zone charges.

Businessman Adam Jackson, 46, was hit with a £910 bill for three journeys through London’s low emission zone (LEZ) in his 2019 McLaren 600LT Spider.

But cars are exempt from the scheme.

The LEZ, which covers most of Greater London and operates 24 hours a day, was set up to encourage the most polluting heavy diesel vehicles to become cleaner.

It sets standards for heavy goods vehicles, buses, and coaches.

Adam, from Chadwell Heath, said: "I feel quite relieved that I don’t have to worry about driving it and picking up these charges.

“Not many people could afford to have that coming out of their account on a whim."

Around a month ago, he set up an auto-pay account in advance of a planned trip into the congestion charge zone on Thursday June 10 for the London Concours, a supercar event at the Honourable Artillery Company.

But when he received his statement he was shocked to find a £610 charge - significantly more than the £15 congestion charge fee he was anticipating.

That bill covered £10 for setting the account up, which Adam accepts, and two separate £300 charges for journeys in the LEZ.

Adam said that when he phoned TfL he was told that the charges had been inaccurately applied, but, when he looked the next day, he saw that he had been charged another £300, taking the total up to £910.

He called again and said he was once more assured that the charges had been inaccurately applied, and told that the appeal would be forwarded, only to receive an email informing him that his request had been rejected and that the charges would apply.

The Recorder contacted TfL for a response and it admitted it should not have told Adam to pay the LEZ charge.

Paul Cowperthwaite, general manager of road user charging, said: “We are very sorry that Mr Jackson was wrongly told he needs to pay the LEZ charge for these three recent journeys.

"This should not have happened and, having now identified an error in our process, we will ensure this does not happen again.

“We will update Mr Jackson’s account to reflect this, and we have written to him to apologise.”