Speed cameras placed in ‘good hunting spots to raise cash’

SPEED cameras are being deployed by police and local councils in “good hunting grounds” to fine drivers and raise revenue rather than improve road safety, a watchdog report has found.

The inquiry by HM Inspectorate of Police said cameras were being placed by some forces on roads where there was no history of collisions, poor driving or any other problem.

Instead, the deployment was “open to the suspicion” that it supported a “self-serving approach” to raising revenue, said the inspectors, whose report was trailed exclusively yesterday by The Daily Telegraph.

The inspectorate’s claim was supported by evidence that speeding fines were the one area of roads policing where incidences were increasing, up by 41 per cent since 2011 to 2,105,409 in a year, mostly due to speed cameras.

This compared with a decline of up to 76 per cent in the other three “fatal four” categories of offences of drink driving, driving without a seat belt and using a mobile phone at the wheel.

The report cited a force area where a row over where to place cameras led to “suspicion among officers, including some at chief officer level, that the focus of activity was intended to increase revenue for the safety partnership”.

“Elsewhere, we were told that the reason enforcement took place at certain locations was that they were ‘good hunting grounds’, rather than because they had a history of collisions,” the inspectors added.

The Inspectorate recommended that safety partnerships should be required to publish the revenue raised from speed cameras and how it was spent.

It found spending on roads policing had fallen by 34 per cent since 2012-13, at the same time as deaths in collisions rose from 1,541 in 2013 to 1,624 in 2018, reversing a decade-long decline.

The inspectors said staff cuts were so acute that one force had just one traffic officer to patrol the county at some points, and in another traffic officers clocked off at 2am even though it was peak time for dangerous driving.

Breathalyser tests were down by 25 per cent from 2015-18, with a corresponding rise in deaths or serious injuries involving drink-driving. Penalty notices for using mobile phones at the wheel fell by 76 per cent from 2011-17 and fines for not wearing seat belts dropped by 75 per cent, as deaths rose.

Commenting on the relationship between enforcement and road deaths, the inspectors said: “Many who we spoke with believed that the marked reduction in enforcement activity had a practical effect on the behaviour of drivers.

“They told us that as the visibility of road traffic police had reduced, so had the ‘fear of being caught’, and this … had led to an increase in offending.”