Thousands of speeding tickets are cancelled every year, but how does your area compare?
Analysis of Government data by the RAC Foundation revealed 404,335 (17%) of 2.4 million speeding cases in 2020/21 were dismissed.
That’s the equivalent of one in six fixed penalty notices in England and Wales being cancelled.
However, the likelihood of fines being cancelled varies across the country.
The highest proportions of cancelled speeding cases during 2020/21 were in Greater Manchester and Warwickshire, where two in every five tickets were scrapped (39%).
In Warwickshire, 34,132 fixed penalty notices were issued and 13,239 were cancelled, while in Greater Manchester, 178,123 were issued and 68,672 were cancelled.
Wiltshire, which has no fixed speed cameras, saw the lowest proportion of dismissed cases, at just 2%.
Most people who were fined for speeding were caught by speed cameras - 2.3 million cases in 2020/21, compared to 105,759 fines issued by police officers.
You’re much more likely to see your fine cancelled if detected by a camera - 17% were cancelled versus 4% of fines issued by police.
Fines issued by cameras in North Wales were the least likely to be dismissed, with 2% cancelled last year.
Excluding the City of London, where few people live but many people drive, those living in Lincolnshire were the most likely to get a speeding fine.
There was the equivalent of 16 fixed penalty notices issued for every 100 people living in the area in 2020/21, followed by 11 fines per 100 people in Norfolk.
People in neighbouring Suffolk were the least likely to be fined as just 13 fixed penalty notices were issued last year.
There are several reasons why offences are cancelled, including:
- Faulty speed cameras
- Cloned vehicles carrying false number plates
- Emergency vehicles lawfully breaking speed limits
- Delays in issuing notices of intended prosecution
- Lack of resources to bring cases to court
The RAC Foundation said some of these issues could have been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.
RAC Foundation director, Steve Gooding, said: “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.”
The total number of speeding offences detected was down by only 6% on the previous year, despite traffic volumes falling by more than a quarter due to coronavirus lockdowns.
However, the number of tickets cancelled rose by 22%.
Some of the change might be due to the Metropolitan Police moving to a new system for processing fixed penalty notices.
This system change is likely to affect the total number of FPNs and the way in which outcomes are recorded (especially cancelled FPNs).
Adam Snow, a lecturer at the law school of Liverpool John Moores University, who worked on the report, said: “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
