'Dangerous' speed camera rakes in £500,000 a year

Well done to Paul Pearson for persisting in find out about this camera - remeber the vast majority of speed cameras are all about the money!

We have flagged up this particular camera before and it should be removed.

And it's nice to see a FoI request being refused by these people and then overturned. They had no right to refuse.

£500k a year. Blimey! Do you think they will remove this camera?

There's absolutely no chance whatsoever.

Captain Gatso

Read the story in the Telegraph

A motorway speed camera blamed for causing accidents generates up to half a million pounds a year in fines.

Crashes have risen by almost a quarter and casualties have almost doubled since the camera was installed on a busy stretch of the M11 in Essex, in 2000.

Now, details revealed under Freedom of Information legislation, show that the device results in up to 9,000 speeding tickets a year, enough to raise around £500,000.

Campaigners have accused the authorities of refusing to remove the camera, despite it being linked to accidents, because of the revenue it brings them.

Paul Pearson, who runs motoring website penaltychargenotice.co.uk, said: "No wonder they haven't removed the camera that is causing these accidents. It is just raising too much money and they clearly want to keep it there."

Essex Police, which runs the camera together with Essex Council and the Highways Agency, had initially refused a Freedom of Information request by Mr Pearson for details about the speeding tickets issued by the machine.

But after a ruling by the Information Commissioner, the police have been forced to disclose that in 2003 alone the M11 camera was responsible for 9,639 fines and a further 8,451 in 2004. The following year 9,047 motorists were caught by the camera and in 2006 a total of 7,801 were sent fines. In 2007, the number fell to 3,305. There are no complete figures for 2008, but in the year up to May 2009, the number of fines had risen to 6,445.