18/06/2010
 

The coalition Government has announced an end to central funding for the speed cameras which ministers claim have been used as cash cows in the past.

But are these devices the revenue grabbing road hogs that they are often characterised as?

This was the point made by one Labour MP yesterday.

The Claim

Speaking at Transport questions in the Commons yesterday, former minister Jim Fitzpatrick, raised doubts as to whether the cameras were used primarily for revenue purposes.

He said: “The income generated has been less than the money spent by the Government on speed cameras”.

However this is not the kind of portrayal the cameras get in sections of the media. This morning’s Daily Mail, for example, ran a story proclaiming “Ministers promise to end funding for speed camera cash cow”.

Yet if Mr Fitzpatrick’s analysis is correct, the cash cow idea becomes hard to sustain. So which interpretation is backed up by the facts?

Analysis

In tackling the issue it is worth looking both at Mr Fitzpatrick’s specific claim, and how the system of funding for speed camera’s operated more generally.

Mr Fitzpatrick’s office told us his claim was based on Treasury figures, however past Transport ministers including Mr Fitzpatrick, have told MPs the data had not been nationally compiled since 2007.

The Treasury has so far been unable to provide us with the figures for revenue. We were advised by the Department for Transport (DfT) that taking £60 for fixed penalty fines, and multiplying it by the 1.3 million offences detected by cameras would suggest cameras generated about £68 million.

However the DfT also suggested a centrally compiled figure for spending specifically on cameras may also be even harder to come by.

This is because cameras are funded through block grants from government to local road safety partnerships, which is more general spent on road safety, not just on cameras.

As Transport minister, Mr Fitzpatrick suggested the figure total funding from Government for road safety in general was £110 million.

Some individual partnerships do publish the figures for the amount they spend and collect from speed enforcement, enabling a local picture of what happens to the money.

The financial statement from Devon and Cornwall Road Safety Partnership provides such figures. While speed enforcement may have generated a surplus in previous years, in 2008/9 the partnership actually spent more on speed enforcement than was generated in revenue.

Sadly not all partnerships make their figures so readily available. Of course such examples do not prove the case conclusively on way or another as they only apply to one locality.

So while Mr Fitzpatrick’s claim is hard to substantiate, the way the funding system for speed cameras operates, suggests he is correct to question the portrayal of the cameras by ministers and the media as cash cows.

Since 2007, central Government has funded road safety programme through grants, but how these grants are spent is decided by the road safety partnerships.

Meanwhile the revenue from speed camera fines goes to the Treasury.

This in turn means that those who decide how much to spend on cameras are not ultimately the people who receive the revenue from fines, which calls into question the extent to which local authorities could be motivated by finance when installing speed cameras.

For example Lincolnshire Road Safety Partnership received a grant of £1.4 million last year, while a spokesman estimated the revenue sent to Treasury was at a similar level if not less.

“I think this year we actually put less into the Treasury than the government actually gave back to us so it’s not generating massive amounts of money just to sit in the Treasury.”

Likewise Thames Valley partnership told us it sent £2.9 million to the Treasury last year, while its operating budget was an estimated £4.25 million. Of course, a much smaller amount of this would be spent on enforcing speed limits.

Yet it would appear that some of these organisations spend more on their overall road safety operations than they raise in fines.

But even if this was not the case the central government grants are not contingent upon money handed over to the Treasury.

A spokesman from Lincolnshire Road Safety Partnership explained the situation.

“We make a bid based on what we need and what we want to carry out based on all the road safety issues and Government takes the money into the Treasury, and hand on heart I don’t think the Treasury interfere with what the Government sends to us,” he said.

But if this is what the people in charge of the cameras say, what do motoring groups make of it?

Full Fact contacted the AA, who largely backed this interpretation of the current system.

Spokesperson Andrew Howard explained to us where he felt the ‘cash cow’ claims had come from.

Until 2000, because authorities were unable to keep the revenue for fines, it cost police money to pursue anyone caught by the cameras. It was when this system changed that interpretation of the system changed.

He said: “From 2000 onwards the local authorities could effectively get  the cost of running cameras back from fine revenue.

“That was where the cash cow claims started, because people started saying that councils make more money the more people they catch.

“To some extent they did, but that was because it cost more money to catch people, therefore they had to get funding to do that.”

He added that since 2007, revenues have gone to the Treasury, while authorities have received central government funding for road safety, meaning accusations of profiteering against those installing the cameras are inaccurate.

“Really from 2007 it’s very hard to say anyone has been making any more from it except central government,” he said.

Conclusion

Coming back to Mr Fitzpatrick’s original claim, it is hard to substantiate given the way the figures are recorded.

Even the financial statements from road safety partnerships are for speed enforcement as a whole rather than the cost of cameras.

Yet Mr Fitzpatrick’s appears justified in questioning the more general assumption around speed cameras.

The people who make the decisions to put in the cameras aren’t the people who collect the money from them. So have no reason to want more cameras from a financial perspective.

This is backed up by the move towards non-fine penalties , such as speed awareness courses. In Devon and Cornwall for instance of those caught speeding nearly half (47 per cent) did not get hit with a fine.

The growth of such alternatives to fines suggests while speed cameras may be unpopular with some motorists, the notion of them being cash cows may have to be put out to pasture.