Police chief’s plan to save speed cameras

The Association of Chief Police Officers has drawn up a ‘business model’ to save the country’s speed cameras from Coalition spending cuts.

The plan allows police forces to reclaim costs of running cameras from courses offered to offenders instead of prosecution. 

The model has already allowed Oxfordshire County to announce plans to turn its cameras back on next April, eight months after they were switched off.

The move emerged in a report to the cabinet of the Royal Borough of Windsor Maidenhead outlining how cameras could be kept running after the council cut funding to the Thames Valley Safer Roads Partnership.

It said: ‘ACPO are due to publish a new business model in November, based largely on developments from TVSRP. This will transfer costs and liabilities away from highway authorities and enable the police to recover all their costs from income from training courses. These courses are offered to offenders as an alternative to other penalties. Costs to HAs will therefore be much lower from next April.’

The report was written by Stephen Brown, who is both the council’s Head of Highways and Engineering and Chairman of TVSRP’s strategy committee. He declined to comment.

An ACPO spokesman said: “The business model hasn’t been published or indeed approved by yet. As such, we’re not able to go provide the document, or go into detail about how the proposals will work at this stage.”

Offenders are currently charged up to £100 a time to attend one-day Speed Awareness courses. Under current ACPO guidance, they are offered to people who have broken the limit by up to 10% plus 6mph, or 72mph in a 60mph zone, and who have not previously taken one in the last three years. Around 30,000 offenders a year take part. 

Read more on this in the 24 November 2010 issue of MCN.