During the 2020-21 financial year, 17 per cent of speeding fines issued in England and Wales ended up being cancelled
One in six speeding fines issued in England and Wales were cancelled during the 2020-21 financial year, according to analysis of the latest official data.
A total of 2,426,950 speeding offences were recorded across the two countries in 2020-21, of which 404,335 (17 per cent) were later cancelled, research by the RAC Foundation revealed.
By comparison, only 13 per cent (330,623) of the 2,584,571 speeding offences recorded in England and Wales in 2019-20 were cancelled.
The data doesn’t show why each individual fine was dropped, but there are a host of possible reasons. These include faulty or incorrectly calibrated cameras, vehicles with cloned number plates committing the offence, emergency service vehicles lawfully breaking the speed limit on blue-light runs, delays in issuing notices of intended prosecution and a lack of resources for bringing cases to court. Some of these problems could have been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Of the speeding offences that weren’t cancelled, 40 per cent were resolved with the driver being sent on a speed awareness course. Another 31 per cent saw a fixed penalty notice issued and 10 per cent resulted in a court case.
Police forces in Greater Manchester and Warwickshire had the highest proportion of cancelled speeding fines, tied on 39 per cent. Only two per cent of speeding offences in Wiltshire were cancelled, but the county also detected the lowest number of speeders – just 912 – due to the fact it has no fixed speed cameras.
The total 2,426,950 speeding offences recorded in England and Wales in 2020-21 was six per cent lower than in 2019-20, but annual traffic volumes were 26 per cent lower. A whopping 96 per cent of offences were picked up by cameras.
Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, commented: “It is correct that drivers caught speeding should face the consequences, but it is also important that the systems of detection and prosecution are robust. The hundreds of thousands of cancelled offences each year indicate they are not. At the very least it is an administrative burden the police could do without.
“We urge the Home Office to start collecting data from police forces about these cancelled offences so we can understand where the problem lies.”
Dr Adam Snow, a lecturer at the Law School of Liverpool John Moores University, assisted the RAC Foundation with its report. He added: “Police forces and local authorities are seeing number plate cloning as a growing problem. With the increasing reliance on camera enforcement for clean air zones and moving traffic violations, there is some evidence to suggest more motorists are seeing this as an acceptable response even though it is fraud.”
Keyword: One in six speeding fines cancelled