Foreign-registered drivers owe Lancashire £640k in speeding fines (From Lancashire Telegraph)

Foreign-registered drivers owe Lancashire £640k in speeding fines

7:00am Monday 4th August 2008

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By Chris Hopper »

FOREIGN drivers on Lancashire’s roads have evaded speeding fines worth more than £640,000 in five years because of an EU loophole.

Figures obtained by the Lancashire Telegraph under the Freedom of Information Act show that more than 10,500 tickets have been ripped up since 2004 because police cannot trace the drivers once they leave Britain.

It means that the county’s police have missed out on fines worth up to £641,400 which equates to more than six cancelled tickets a day, or 45 a week.

Police chiefs have blamed the staggering statistics on an EU loophole which means they cannot the access vehicle registration systems of other European countries.

But East Lancashire MPs have branded the figures “appalling” and “disturbing” and have demanded action.

Greg Pope, member for Hyndburn, said: “These statistics are appalling.

"I am sure motorists will be horrified that they have to pay but these foreign drivers don’t have to.

“My understanding was that we have an agreement with other EU countries so we can just contact the equivalent DVLA to trace these drivers.”

Ribble Valley MP Nigel Evans added: “Clearly this is very disturbing.

"Hundreds of thousands of pounds are being lost in fines because of this loophole and foreign drivers are proving themselves to be above the law.

“Urgent cooperation is needed among all countries to ensure that offenders are not getting away with it.”

He also urged police to use clamping and ‘smart technology’ to target offenders.

Meanwhile, the problems Lancashire police bosses say they encounter have been backed up by a leading motorists’ group.

Jo Abbott, of the RAC Foundation, agreed that a Europe-wide policy change was needed.

She said: “The real problem is that the EU does not yet have a directive or agreement that says that there is a system needed to help collect these fines, although they are talking about it at the moment.

“In some countries they have on-the-spot fines. So, for example, if someone from Lancashire speeds on a French road, they could be fined on the spot.

“And if they don’t have the money, they could be taken to a cash machine to pay the fine.”

The foundation would prefer traffic police to be “out there patrolling the roads” rather than using speed cameras, added Miss Abbott.

The figures, which are held centrally by Lancashire police, take into account cancelled speeding fines since the beginning of 2004 but do not include all unpaid tickets by foreign drivers.

Officials said tracking down all tickets unpaid by overseas motorists would be too time-consuming and was not covered by Freedom of Information.

A police spokesman added: “This is a nationally recognised issue and plans are in place at national level for future enforcement techniques.

“However, at the moment there is an obvious difficulty in tackling this issue as we do not have access to foreign registration systems.

“In Lancashire, when we have a large influx in any one area of foreign motorists caught speeding, we are able to put markers on those vehicles so that our Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) teams are then able to stop the vehicles and obtain details from the driver.”

Earlier this year, a Lancashire speed camera technician was fired after 545 drivers were wrongly hit with speeding fines when he failed to correctly calibrate a mobile speed camera.

And last month, it emerged that more than 1,200 motorists had been fined up to £72,000 by a single mobile camera on the A56 Accrington bypass.

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