Here's the real story without the Police Standards hype!!!
Press Release 27th October 2007
Is it for road safety?
With the announcement that the IPCC is to manage a police investigation into Blackburn CTO I present the following:
As the owner of a vehicle that gets zapped by a speed camera, you know that, the robots are there to improve road safety? No! More like cash cow facility!
Please read on:
You admit responsibility, name the driver (if another), go to court or request a picture to jog your memory. As from this summer the fee is no longer £10 in Lancashire. Not cost effective.
It appears that in Lancashire some 25% of issued tickets (Fixed Penalty Notices) in 2005/6 disappeared.
No one fined, not excused through extenuating circumstances, not on a speed awareness course, not processed through the courts. That's around £1.5 million not to mention the 25,000 drivers left with fewer penalty points, some of whom are a danger to themselves and also the rest of the public. This cannot really be in the interests of road safety.
Lancashire Road Safety Partnership is a collection of agencies, councils and emergency services including the Lancashire Police. Its board members have failed to control the operation. Indeed perhaps even the County Council is not fully aware of what is going on at the central ticket office, yet they are partners, actually they are the treasurer.
We, as charge payers in this County, together with anyone who travels through or visits the area, surely must expect that something so dear to our well-being is being professionally run. After all during 2005/2006 a staggering £4.5 million was levied on speeding drivers by this Road Safety Partnership. But only the ones who didn’t challenge the ticket are the direct source of this income!
On top of this were the fines imposed by the courts, figures unknown. A further income of £1.5 million was generated into the coffers of Lancashire County Council by way of speed awareness courses plus the undisclosed income from supply of photographs at £10.00 a time! Not to mention the amount paid into the legal system from prosecution and defence of the alleged offences, by way of costs and increased fines for contesting the ticket.
Every penny of this from members of the public’s already previously taxed income!
There needs to be a FULL investigation carried out into the operation of the Lancashire Road Safety ‘club’ and not just for the 2005/2006 'season'. Public confidence has to be restored and any officials responsible taken to task. A full audit of the finances which are claimed to have been checked by the Audit Commission should take place.
This presumably is done by the N West auditor responsible for Councils & police.
- Are they audited, checking all the numbers? Who carries this out? Nobody seems to know – Not even the audit Commission!!
We cannot have a quango in this country in which one person is prosecution, judge, jury, and operates with a self imposed 'gungho attitude’, holding motorists to ransom, deciding who gets prosecuted or which prosecutions disappears, without accountability. This is a doorway to corruption!
Road Safety is one of the most important facilities anywhere; run professionally it saves our lives, and reduces a drain on NHS services, releases fire & ambulance crews, helps stop lives being wrecked. Yet run as a cash guzzling sideline, managed with a god like regime, with few checks & balances- We all loose out.
Even the Government who received the surpluses under the previous netting out system appears to have been shortchanged by an incredible £1.5 million of taxpayers’ money every year. Incidentally speeding prosecutions must commence within six months. But any instances of collusion, conspiracy or criminal actions will still be on the books.
The announcement in late October 2007 of an investigation managed by the IPCC was triggered innocently enough by a challenged speeding ticket issued November 2006 to a Preston driving school, North Western Driver Training Centre. Most people going to court instruct a lawyer, however in this case, the charged named keeper did not have a solicitor.
Thus the Crown Prosecution sent the evidence file to the named keeper. This file included numerous suspect documents, all copies. One should add that whilst copies are normal practise, the actual originals must always be available to study. In this case magistrates had to order the originals to be produced by Blackburn central ticket office to be studied by the defence’s document expert. All the defence costs being funded from the public purse, in the public interest.
Some of the problems could have been going on for years.
Lawyers in the past must have, as is reasonable, believed that the evidence file was kosher. Now that doubts and concerns have been voiced in open court hearings as to the authenticity of documentation and procedures, emanating from Blackburn CTO, it is the responsibility of the IPCC to ensure that all doubts and concerns are openly clarified regarding every prosecution or failure to prosecute, whatever the cost..
Therefore we must all hope the IPCC will not stop at checking on recent practises -
But go back to the start of when drivers were being 'stuffed' by Lancashire Police
& the Road Safety Partnership – operating under the guise of making Lancashire roads safer.
Lancashire Police Standards claim that they discovered the “problems” during an internal investigation. But were they pushed into it (see attachment) and under what complaint were they conducting this investigation?
Attachment available here. It's a copy of a letter from Nigel Evans MP To Jack Straw that kicked it all off!!! Lancashire Constabulary have been fighting over a year to cover up what is going on at Blackburn!
http://rapidshare.com/files/65580990/jack1.pdf
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