Anyone involved in the industry of speed cameras will be aware of the activities of Road Safety Support Ltd (RSS). It provides expert advice, training and other support services to safety camera partnerships, police forces and local councils. For example, where a speed camera prosecution is contested in a court of law, they might provide evidence as expert witnesses. But it now appears that they have actually been taking over the prosecution of such cases. Is this legal?
Emma Patterson of Patterson Law was interviewed on talkRadio yesterday on this subject (4/11/2017 – see here: http://talkradio.co.uk/radio/listen-again/1509800400 – it’s about 5 minutes in). She is an expert on motoring law. She suggests that it has not been legal because RSS do not appear to be a registered law firm.
RSS was set up in 2007 by Meredydd Hughes a former Chief Constable, and former traffic officer Trevor Hall. They are still directors of this company which is a private limited company (limited by guarantee). It is not known who the “Members” of the company are, but their accounts make interesting reading. These are available in “abbreviated form” from Companies House and show net assets of £1.1 million at March 2017. In addition, it shows retained earnings of £1.04 million, up from £790,000 in October 2015; in other words surplus profits of £256,000 in a period of 18 months. This is not a small business.
Meredydd Hughes and Trevor Hall were also involved in the creation of NDORS Ltd who operated the scheme to divert drivers (via Police waivers) to profit generating speed-awareness courses – see http://www.speed-awareness.org/profits.html before that role was taken over by UK ROED Ltd. That’s another private company over which the Government has no control. Although all these companies mentioned above are technically “not for profit” companies who cannot distribute dividends they can of course pay their directors and staff large sums of money, and provide good homes for retired police officers, or even serving officers.
One can see exactly why and how there are doubts about the morality of this whole area when there is such a strong financial motive potentially influencing the people involved. As we have said before about the use of police waivers and speed-awareness courses, the dubious nature and illegality of these arrangements seems to have been ignored in the pursuit of profits, and with no regard to whether they provide any road safety benefit.
Note that RSS is receiving over £400,000 per year from police forces. See http://www.pattersonlaw.co.uk/rss-ltd-and-road-traffic-offence-enforcement/ for more information.
This latest allegation about the role of RSS reinforces the questionable nature of these private companies who operate outside the control of Government.
Roger Lawson
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AmpowABD
You can “follow” this blog by clicking on the bottom right.
AMPOW - Speed Awareness Campaign 
The latest offer of a ‘speed awareness’ course was declined by me. I duly took the three points (currently my only points) and paid the £100. I might feel forced to go on one if a future NIP threatened to take me to nine points. I feel that unlikely but possible given the current unfair regime.
LikeLike
You should have told them also that you refused to be part of a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.
LikeLike
Under the right circumstances I might try that. An example would be where the speed limit had been set inappropriately such as the A515 in Derbyshire – a limit opposed by the police yet enforced by scamera van. I’m a bit wise to that though and even when stopped by the cops they just want a chat nodding in agreement.
LikeLike