Council cuts can cameras

26th July 2010

The speed camera has been pole-axed in Oxfordshire – in a scenario that could be repeated around the country as councils react to slashed budgets.

The local authority has voted to withdraw from the Thames Valley Road Safety Partnership in a bid to save £600,000 – a move that cuts funding to 72 fixed camera locations and 89 mobile sites. From the middle of next month, the cameras will be switched off.

The Coalition Government has cut local councils’ road safety budgets by £37.7million in a move that pre-empts Tory promises to slash all central funding for fixed speed cameras.

Meanwhile, the Devon and Cornwall Safety Camera Partnership has been disbanded, due to a funding shortfall.

Forty jobs will be lost. And a spokesman for the local camera partnership in Somerset said many of his county’s fixed devices will be removed within the next few months – although mobile cameras will still be used.

Swindon Council in Wiltshire became the first authority to stop using cameras, in 2008, and statistics released earlier this year show there was a slight reduction in the number of accidents there after their removal.