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Fixed Penalties: Essex

Volume 463: debated on Monday 3 September 2007

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many fixed penalty notices were issued by Essex Police in (a) 2003, (b) 2004, (c) 2005 and (d) 2006; how many of those notices have been paid; how many have been sent to be determined in court; and how many have remained unanswered. (152780)

The information collected by the Office for Criminal Justice Reform identifies the number of motoring offences fixed penalty notices issued by result at police force area level. Data are collected on the disposal, (i.e. paid, fine registration certificate issued etc.). However because of the time taken for the procedures for payment to be enforced the data are collected approximately nine months later than the period of issue and published in the following years' annual volume covering motoring offences.

2003 data are provided in Table A. 2004 data will be published in the autumn in the publication “Offences Relating to Motor Vehicles, England and Wales 2005, Supplementary Tables”. It is expected that 2005 data will be published in 2008 and 2006 data in 2009.

The penalty notice for disorder (PND) scheme was rolled out to police forces in England and Wales in 2004 under the provisions of the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001. Data on the number of the penalty notices issued, paid, contested in court as well as unpaid PNDs registered as fines, for 2004 and 2005 in Essex, are provided in Table B. In addition, provisional data show that a further 4,357 PNDs were issued in 2006; detailed information on the number paid, contested in court and fine registered will be available this autumn.

Under the scheme, the police are able to issue penalty notices of either £50 or £80 for a specified range of minor disorder offences. The recipient of a PND has 21 days to either pay the penalty or seek a court hearing. If the recipient takes no action and the notice remains unanswered, a fine of one-and-a-half times the penalty amount is registered against them. The courts are responsible for enforcing PNDs in the same way as any other unpaid fine.

Table A: Fixed penalty notices issued by result in Essex police force area, 2003

Fixed penalty notices

Endorsable

Non-endorsable (driver present)

Non-endorsable (driver absent)

Total

Number of notices

Paid within 28 days

85,041

5,918

6,443

97,402

Payment accepted after 28 days

10,250

941

2,497

13,688

Sub-total paid

95,291

6,859

8,940

111,090

Process issued

5

5

No further action taken

34

110

1,171

1,315

Fine registration certificate issued1

273

1,818

2,190

4,281

Total

95,598

8,787

12,306

116,691

Percentage of notices

Paid within 28 days

88.96

67.35

52.36

83.47

Payment accepted after 28 days

10.72

10.71

20.29

11.73

Sub-total paid

99.68

78.06

72.65

95.20

Process issued

0.04

0.00

No further action taken

0.04

1.25

9.52

1.13

Fine registration certificate issued1

0.29

20.69

17.80

3.67

Total

100

100

100

100

1 Includes outcomes not finalised. Note: Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by the police forces. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used. Source: Fixed penalty notices collection held by Office for Criminal Justice Reform.

Table B: Number of penalty notices for disorder (PNDs) issued, paid in full, contested in court and fine registered in Essex police force area, 2004 and 20051

Number issued

Paid in full

Court hearing requested

Fine registered

2004

2,802

1,681

1,054

2005

4.454

2,789

3

1,464

1 Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by police forces. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used.