There’s a massive gulf in motorist prosecutions, between the toughest police forces and those with a more softly, softly approach.

A special Auto Express investigation, which compared the number of endorsable offences dished out in each police region across the UK, revealed Northamptonshire topped the prosecutions league table for England and Wales, doling out a fixed penalty notice to nearly one in every six cars! The Scottish region of Dumfries and Galloway was even tougher, ticketing the equivalent of one-fifth of all cars within its boundaries.

Speeding
Tickets for speeding topped the list of offences, with 1.46 million registered in 2007, helping to net the Government well over £1.2billion for the year. Of those, a whopping 86 per cent were captured by speed traps.

Worst of the bunch south of Scotland was North Wales, which has the highest speeding prosecution rate in England and Wales, at one in every eight cars in the region. It also has the highest camera per car rate for the UK. With only 15 fixed traps, the force relies on inventive use of mobile cameras, including even hiding one in a horsebox last year!

Dumfries and Galloway Police doesn’t boast a single fixed Gatso or Truvelo – instead relying on only two camera vans to catch drivers unaware – but the force still took first place in our Scottish league table, with 16 per cent of cars receiving tickets for speeding in 2008/9.

Also working its mobile fleet to the full is Cumbria; it’s at the top of the English police force league for speeding tickets, despite having only 12 fixed cameras. While at the bottom of England’s list is Durham, which has only two fixed speed cameras and one camera van operating at 80 sites.

Rural forces in the bottom 10 for all points-earning tickets included Gloucestershire (fifth from bottom) and North Yorkshire (fourth), but urban police forces came low down, too. Despite 1,314 camera sites in the capital, the car-weighted results put London seventh from bottom for all endorsable offences, with the West Midlands (including Birmingham) just below it.

The investigation also revealed the counties who were tough on illegal mobile phone use, uninsured drivers and red-light jumping, too. While these figures were not available for Scotland, in our England and Wales database, they promoted Merseyside, Hertfordshire and Nottinghamshire to the top spots respectively.

Red lights
The stand-out prosecutor for red-light jumpers is Nottinghamshire, with the force’s traffic-light cameras claiming over 50 per cent more prosecutions than the next most vigilant force, which is Leicestershire. The results show that its 41 mainly city-based red light cameras claimed one prosecution for every 42 cars in the county. By contrast, London’s 301 traffic light cameras only snapped enough of the capital’s 2.6 million cars to net it seventh place.

Insurance
According to the Home Office, police prosecuted 12,960 motorists for driving without insurance in 2007. In our car-weighted research, it was Hertfordshire that snared the most offenders in England and Wales, followed by North Wales, Lancashire and London.

Mobile phones
Merseyside topped the chart for prosecutions in England and Wales, netting just under one per cent of total cars within the police region at 4,547. South Yorkshire was second, followed by the West Mercia region of Herefordshire, Shropshire and Worcestershire.

Auto Express News and Features Editor Julie Sinclair said: “Our investigation reveals the shocking truth behind the Police penalty points system in the UK; that it’s a postcode lottery. The extent to which your driving licence is at risk, simply depends on where you live.”

The AA agreed the findings made shocking reading. Its spokesman said: “The Auto Express figures clearly demonstrate that police strategies vary enormously. It is unfair that what you’re doing in one place might not get you a penalty, whereas it might in another. But it’s never been consistent. It does mean drivers are a bit cynical about what goes on, because it clearly is a lottery.”

Table 1: Top regions with most points per car (England and Wales)

Source: Home Office England and Wales prosecution figures for 2007

Table 2: Points per car in Scotland

Source: Scottish Government’s Statistical Bulletin Crime and Justice Series: Recorded Crime in Scotland, 2008/09

Table 3: Points hotspots at a glance

Source: Home Office England and Wales prosecution figures for 2007 and Scottish Government’s Statistical Bulletin Crime and Justice Series: Recorded Crime in Scotland, 2008/09

Table 4: Endorsable Offences by Region in England and Wales

Source: Home Office England and Wales prosecution figures for 2007
*Includes mobile sites, **Includes City of London, ***Included in South Wales total

Table 5: Endorsable Offences by Region in Scotland

Source: Scottish Government’s Statistical Bulletin Crime and Justice Series: Recorded Crime in Scotland, 2008/09