I’ve signed-up to the drive to use motoring fines at home

Have you ever been fined for a motoring offence? Maybe you never have. But if you have, how did you feel? Angry? Embarrassed? Victimised even?

Let’s be honest, when anyone is pulled over for things like speeding, parking in the wrong place or breaching any of the laws that govern our roads, they have no-one else to blame but themselves. But would the pain be eased if they knew the money they were ordered to pay as a fixed penalty, was going to be used to address a road-related issue in their area? Because I think the system should be changed to allow this to happen.

I am one of 33 senior leaders across UK policing, local government and road safety organisations who signed a joint letter to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood and Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport) Lilian Greenwood, calling for urgent reform of the UK’s speed enforcement system. It’s in support of a campaign led by West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner Simon Foster and Mayor Richard Parker, calling for:

• An urgent review of the speed enforcement system in the UK
• a fair system where offenders, not law-abiding drivers and taxpayers, fund enforcement, consistent with the ‘polluter pays’ principle and the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 and
• sustainable funding to expand proven, high-value road safety measures across the UK.

During the last 12 months, around 13,000 fixed penalty notices were served in Gloucestershire, totalling around £1.3m paid in fines. Currently, millions of pounds from road safety-related fixed penalty fines go straight to the Treasury, diverted away from the area where the crime is committed. Though it should be noted that the Constabulary does receive revenue from the National Driver Offender Retraining Scheme (NDORS), as long as it is used for road safety purposes. 

Police forces, councils and road safety partnerships bear the cost of installing, running and enforcing speed camera schemes. There is plenty of evidence that these schemes prevent collisions, reduce the number of people being killed and seriously injured. And yet, the money collected from fixed penalty notices gets swallowed-up by the Treasury when it could be re-invested to make local communities safer and used by the people who know best.

My commitment to making Gloucestershire’s roads safer is enshrined in my Police and Crime Plan. The revenue collected from making just this one change in the speed enforcement system, would help me do that.