I've been caught by Britain's most prolific speed camera – it makes the road no safer

Telegraph

a day ago

When careful motorist Norman Tate received a letter of intended prosecution for speeding, he could hardly believe it.
It told the grandfather, who had had a clean driving licence for more than a quarter of a century before the incident last year, that he'd been caught doing 45mph in a 30mph zone in his Ford Mondeo by a speed camera on a busy junction on the A38 in Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire.
'I'm a straight-up person. My immediate thought was, 'I'm a senior citizen and don't do 45mph in a 30mph area',' says Tate, now 80. 'I might creep over the limit by a few miles an hour, but not by that much. So I thought I'd investigate.'
The chartered civil engineer, with experience of road and bridge design, analysed the signage along that stretch of road. He's concluded that it is 'not fit for purpose' – and argues that motorists should be given better warnings that they are about to enter a 30mph area.
It is a view that others who have been caught by that speed camera share – and there are plenty of them. In fact, the little yellow box mounted on a pole is so prolific that it is said to be the 'most lucrative' speed camera in the country, according to a Channel 5 documentary due to be broadcast tonight at 8pm.
Speed Cameras: Are They Out to Get You? says that one camera caught 17,498 speeding offences in nine months from when it was installed in August 2023 – at an average rate of 72 per day and potentially costing motorists more than £1.6 million.
So, what, you might well ask, is going on with this camera in a Nottinghamshire market town to make it ranked the most prolific – and some claim the sneakiest – in the country? And what happens to all the money it generates?
When we visit Sutton-in-Ashfield to meet Tate, from nearby Chesterfield, Derbyshire, he explains how, as you approach the camera from junction 28 of the M1, first there is a 70mph speed limit that suddenly turns to 50mph – with an average-speed camera overhead – then it goes to 30mph about 100 yards from the crossroads where the camera is. There is a 30mph sign as you approach on the dual carriageway and a smaller sign warning of the camera ahead and reminding you it's 30mph.
But, Tate says: 'When I started looking into the signage, it became apparent that if there's a high-sided vehicle on the inside lane, there's no way you can see the 30mph sign. There is nothing on the road itself to say it's 30mph. I think there should be. It's too easy to think you're still in the 50mph zone.'
(When we stopped by at a busy 4pm, motorists appeared to be driving carefully, but it was hard to tell whether it was carefully enough – the camera uses infra-red light technology, which means it doesn't flash.)
The figures in the documentary come from a survey by Legal Expert, a personal injury, compensation and accident claim solicitor company. To obtain them, the firm made a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to all 43 police forces in England and Wales asking for the number of speeding fines issued in the 12 months to April 5 2024, and the top 20 spots where drivers have been caught speeding. Only 23 replied.
If the 17,498 figure for the camera on the A38 in Sutton-in-Ashfield is annualised, it would be 23,331, putting it ahead of the second-placed speed camera, which was on the M25 between junctions 7 and 16 in Surrey (21,989 offences, at a daily average of 60).
With speeding offences resulting in a £100 fine and three points on your licence (if they result in a fixed penalty notice and are not contested), that would mean that £2,333,100 worth of fines would have been threatened in a year, using the annualised figure for the A38 camera.
A separate FOI request, not mentioned in the documentary, about the A38 speed camera was later made to Nottinghamshire Police by Gary Eyre, a heating engineer from Huthwaite, near Sutton-in-Ashfield. He found the reply 'flabbergasting': it said 41,675 motorists were punished for travelling in excess of the 30mph limit in the camera's first 20 months. 'I go into about 10 houses every day and everybody knows someone who's been done,' he said, explaining what prompted him to make the FOI request.
That means at least £4.1 million worth of fines will have been threatened during that period. Nottinghamshire Police has stressed to The Telegraph that 47 per cent of those offences were resolved with speed awareness courses as an alternative to prosecution, so no fines will have been paid for those.
'I don't disagree with having speed cameras,' Tate says, 'and this one is there doing the job it should be doing and is designed to do – if the signage was correct. This is a very dangerous junction and the camera is trying to save people's lives. But if there's 23,000 people a year going through there at the wrong speed, there's something wrong – and that's the signage.'
His attempts to argue his case saw him locked in what he called a 'David and Goliath' battle with the authorities. In the end, after first electing to go to trial, he pleaded guilty to his speeding offence, committed at 11.09am on February 1 last year.
He did not contest the 45mph recorded by the camera but argued that the advance warning signs from the 50mph to the 30mph zone are 'inadequate' and called for a review of those signs. Magistrates gave him four points, fined him £360, and ordered him to pay a surcharge to victim services of £144 and £150 costs to the Crown Prosecution Service.
In the documentary, Tate is featured with his friend Brian Staples, 76, a retired auto electrician from Papplewick, Nottinghamshire, who runs a classic car club. Staples is more dubious of the camera's intent, telling the documentary: 'They're taking those motorists to court and making them look as if they're bad drivers, and they're not. Friends that I know have been caught there are in their 80s – they're not speeding, they've just been caught out.' Staples also claims that some speed cameras are there just to collect money rather than to slow people down.
Patrica Harvey, 68, a retired office accounts manager from Pinxton, Derbyshire, told The Telegraph that she has been caught speeding by the Sutton-in-Ashfield camera twice in a year, the second time around a fortnight ago. Both times, she said her speed was in the mid-30s mph.
'I was specifically looking for the sign the second time but didn't see it,' she said. 'I'm really very cautious about my speed. But one minute you're in 50mph, then it's 30mph. There's not enough signs telling you what's happening.'
Judy Gascoigne, 66, a PA from Matlock, Derbyshire, was warned by a passenger in her car of the camera ahead and was trying to slow down when she was caught doing 36mph. 'I didn't see the signage,' she said. 'I did a speed awareness course and there were four or five others on it caught at the same camera.'
Another motorist said: 'I got caught twice in the same week. When there's tree branches in the way and large vehicles, the signs are difficult to see.'
The documentary also raises the question of what happens to the money from speed camera fines, making the point that it is common misconception that it goes to the council. In fact, it goes directly to central government, to the Treasury, and is used towards general spending rather than ring-fenced for specific areas.
Motoring journalist and transport campaigner Quentin Willson told the documentary: 'If the public saw that the revenue raised from speeding fines made a visible difference, then perhaps the public would be more behind them.'
It is an issue that West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner Simon Foster is campaigning on. He wants the money raised from speeding fines in his region to be spent on road safety schemes there. During a consultation in 2023, 93 per cent of the public agreed that money raised from fixed penalty fines should stay in the region.
So far, however, his calls – to both this and the previous government – have not resulted in a change of policy. One argument against allowing the income from speed cameras to be retained locally is that it might incentivise regions to install cameras to make money.
Nottinghamshire Police said around 37,000 vehicles go through the junction where the Sutton-in-Ashfield camera is every day, so only a very small percentage are exceeding the speed limit.
There had been at least one fatal collision and a number of serious injury collisions in the years before the camera was installed. But there have been no fatal or serious injury collisions since it was installed and the rate of offences have reduced to around 60 a day.
The force also said work to cut back foliage to ensure all signage was visible was done before the camera went live, and the 'unusual step' was taken of putting out proactive communication to inform people of the new camera.
Inspector Simon Allen, of Nottinghamshire Police, said: 'While the 30mph limit around this junction is not set by the police, it is in place for a very good reason – including the very large number of children who use the pedestrian crossings to get to and from school each day.
'Like all safety cameras in the UK, this unit is in place to reduce speed and prevent road traffic collisions – not to catch people speeding.'
A Department for Transport spokesman said: 'Fines from speeding offences help fund essential public services including health care, transport and policing in the West Midlands and across the country.
'While we keep the motoring offences and their penalties under review, we don't currently have any plans to change this system.'