Policing: Village Vigilantes go for Their Speed Guns

A scheme that lets villagers catch speeding drivers is spreading rapidly across the country

The Sunday Times, July 03rd 2005, Alistair Weaver

Hundreds of volunteers are being trained by police to trap drivers speeding on rural roads. The “village vigilante” scheme, which started as a local experiment in traffic policing, has quietly expanded across large swathes of the country.

The rapid take-up has surprised even the police forces involved, who say it is fast becoming as popular as the Neighbourhood Watch scheme. Under the initiative, motorists' speeds are checked by amateurs trained by police specialists to use speed guns. Drivers who are caught do not receive a fine or points on their licence but they are sent a police letter threatening them with prosecution if they repeat the offence.

Nearly a third of the 43 police forces in England and Wales are currently training villagers to use speed guns and report drivers.

The Community Speed Watch project, as it is officially known, was first introduced by Avon and Somerset police in 2002 and has since been adopted by forces that include Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, Merseyside, West Yorkshire, Cheshire and Sussex. Police in Kent say they are hoping to launch their programme this summer.

The demand among villagers to join the programme is attributed to the rapid growth in rural traffic. The biggest problem is said to be drivers who, having been forced off major roads by congestion, are using rural roads as rat runs. In many areas there is now a waiting list of villages to sign up for the scheme.

In Northamptonshire the Community Speed Watch pilot scheme was launched in 2003 in five villages and has been expanded to 29, with many more on the waiting list. It is financed by a mixture of local authority funding and donations from local communities that want to participate.

The Northamptonshire Casualty Reduction Trust Fund, which is operated by the county council and uses money from speed-awareness courses, which drivers caught by conventional methods are forced to attend, provides about £15,000 a year to the initiative.

Parish councils that want to join the scheme must provide a list of at least 10 volunteers to local police. The 10 are then trained to operate speed guns identical to those used by police and kitted out with official-looking high-visibility jackets.

They are taught to work in pairs, with one volunteer operating the gun and another noting down the offending vehicle's details, including its speed, registration number, make, model and colour. This information is passed to police, who trace the driver and issue a warning letter.

Joanne Sharp is a mother of two young children who lives in Abthorpe, one of the latest villages in Northamptonshire to join the scheme. “People persistently speed through the village and it's a concern,” she says. “I had a bit of time on my hands so I volunteered to help.

“I'm not political and I don't want to be seen as a vigilante but I hope the scheme's a success. When people see us they do slow down.”

The expansion of a scheme that takes power away from police and puts it into the hands of members of the public has caused disquiet within motoring organisations, who say that traffic management and road safety is too important a job to be left to unaccountable amateurs.

The organisations see the mushrooming of the scheme as further evidence that overstretched constabularies are looking to offload their road-policing authority.

“The numbers of traffic police have declined in the past decade and this process has been accelerated by the reliance on speed cameras,” says Edmund King, of the RAC Foundation. “A fixed camera or one held by a citizen does nothing to address the problems of drink, drug or dangerous driving.

“Arming village vigilantes is not a long-term solution. Rather than tooling up pensioners we should be working on a fundamental solution to the problems on our roads.”

Supporters of the village vigilantes point out that speeding motorists caught by civilians will not be prosecuted, merely warned. But in cases of severe repeat offending, a mobile camera operated by police officers will be set up in the area.

Fixed cameras will not be erected on the basis of the volunteers' results, since government rules state that these can only be placed in accident blackspots.

“Speed Watch does not replace the role of speed enforcement,” says Don Powell, a spokesman for Northamptonshire police. “But it does recognise that speeding is a community issue, not just a matter for the police. People want to do something about it and we are giving them the tools to do the job.

“It helps the police to identify when and where there is a problem. We will then send a mobile safety camera unit to the area to prosecute speeding drivers but we will not target individual motorists.”

This is not the first example of police devolving some of their workload to third parties. Last year local councils in London were given powers to fine motorists for bad driving, in particular for blocking yellow hatched box junctions. Previously it was up to the police to deal with such misdemeanours.

Traffic wardens used to be employed by the police but since 1994 councils have been able to contract parking enforcement to private companies. The result has been a huge upsurge in the number of tickets handed out, with profits from the fines kept by the councils.

There is also concern that at least some of those caught speeding will themselves be local people, giving rise to neighbourhood feuds. In Fowlmere, Cambridgeshire, a two-week trial of the village vigilante scheme “ran into some pretty ferocious opposition from some parts of the community, who thought that it was dividing the village”, according to local police.

“Some people may see it as an example of local busybodies sticking their nose in,” says Tony Vickers of the Association of British Drivers.

“A less personal solution such as vehicle-activated traffic signs would be preferable.”

Police admit the volunteers may be exposing themselves to abuse from angry local drivers who know their identities. For that reason, volunteers are also given training in how to defuse a threatening situation. They must also work in pairs and carry a mobile phone.

Geoff Holbrooke, chairman of the parish council in Whittlebury, Northamptonshire, says that the problems they face are minor compared with the threat of speeding drivers.

“Some people do stop and inquire what we're doing,” he says. “And I have had drivers speeding through at 63mph shouting ‘pathetic' and making obscene gestures. But the locals we catch are so embarrassed that they won't do it again.”