Could localism agenda save speed cameras from the scrapheap?

The DfT’s cut to funding for safety cameras in England has prompted a range of different responses from highway authorities. In many areas camera enforcement is being reduced and in one or two places it is being withdrawn altogether. Yet at least one authority has found replacement funding and many more are looking at ways to retain camera enforcement using new funding sources

Andrew Forster

06 August 2010

A speed camera on the A38 Bristol Road in Birmingham. Enforcement has ceased at more than half the West Midlands 300 cameras but the details aren’t known to motorists

All five speed cameras in Swindon were decommissioned last year, including this one on the A420. A vehicle activated sign has since been installed

Speed and red light cameras in Oxfordshire were turned off last weekend following the county council’s decision to slash funding to the Thames Valley Safer Roads Partnership.

Thurrock Council has also just decided to withdraw from the Essex camera scheme, raising the prospect of cameras being switched off in the small unitary authority in the coming weeks.

The actions of Oxfordshire and Thurrock follow the Government’s decision to cut the Road Safety Grant. The grant, worth...