Police cancelled nearly a quarter of a million speeding tickets over a 12-month period, new figures have revealed.
Greater Manchester police cancelled the greatest proportion of tickets across the country, issuing 120,094 from March 2016 to 2017, but cancelling 33,893 (28 per cent) of them.
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Official data from the Home Office also showed West Midlands police dropped 21 per cent of issued speeding tickets, while Bedfordshire officers cancelled 19 per cent.
Some forces had much lower cancellation rates, however: North and South Yorkshire, Cleveland, Essex and Nottinghamshire forces cancelled just three per cent of their tickets. Staffordshire and North Wales police, meanwhile, stood by 99 per cent of all the tickets they issued.
Dr Adam Snow, a criminology lecturer at Liverpool Hope University, told This is Money that 241,165 of the 2.2 million speeding offences detected in England and Wales in 2016/17 were cancelled.
While the official data doesn’t reveal why the tickets were invalidated, Gloucestershire police admitted 43 per cent of its cancelled tickets were caused by officers not being able to trace guilty drivers. Administration errors were also thought to be partly to blame, while Dr Snow said “poor or obsolete” equipment, including cameras, could lead to drivers not being penalised.
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Nick Freeman, a high-profile solicitor specialising in traffic and speeding offences, told This is Money: “The statistics suggest that far too many mistakes are being made before the prosecution process has even begun.”
Previous Home Office data revealed 53 per cent of cars broke motorway speed limits in 2016, and 53 per cent of cars also breached 30mph zones. Meanwhile, 81 per cent of vehicles failed to adhere to 20mph limits.
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