Only two speed cameras across the Bath area would be re-activated if the Council honour a request from the police chief constable to turn them back on.
A request from the chief constable of Avon and Somerset Police last month to turn fixed speed cameras across the area back on has been met with mixed reactions.
Nick Gargan wrote to local councils in June offering the constabulary’s help to reactivated the cameras which were turned off as part of a scheme in 2011.
The cameras were switched off after the government cut funding for the Safety Camera Partnership, putting control of the cameras in the hands of the police and councils. Avon and Somerset Police and Bath and North East Somerset Council could not afford to pay for them.
The Council have said that they principally support the idea of the reactivation of the cameras across the area.
The chief constable wrote to five local councils saying that he had “not seen any evidence of any value that say speed cameras harm”.
“I have seen evidence that on balance they can help and reduce casualties.”
“When I first arrived as chief constable, I was quite surprised to learn that the cameras had been switched off.
“The evidence steers me firmly in the direction of trying to get them switched back on.”
A spokesman for Bath and North East Somerset Council told the BBC: “Although [the] council is supportive in principle of the police proposal to re-commission static speed cameras, the council has only two digital camera sites which are capable of being reactivated.
“Accident levels at both sites have remained low since the 2011 switch-off; therefore the council cannot justify the initial start-up expenditure.”
The speed camera on the Batheaston bypass. ©Google
