THE region's courts are writing off thousands of pounds worth of fines because officials are failing to enforce them.

Finance chiefs say there is a urgent need to improve the information available on offenders in order that they can be tracked. In many instances court summons are failing to arrive, meaning people are convicted in their absence.

Enforcement teams are also failing to trace offenders because information is incomplete and as a result scores of warrants are being rejected each week.

Brin Jones, head of finance at County Durham Magistrates Courts Committee, which is owed £2.5m, admitted that as many as 50 arrest and seizure of goods warrants were failing to be executed every week by bailiffs contracted to enforce fines.

Last year the committee wrote off almost half-a-million pounds.

He said: "We are finding that increasingly false names and addresses are being given to police in the first instance and we are looking at ways that more checks can be carried out within the system."

Anne Smith, head of fines at Cleveland magistrates courts committee, said it had written off £337,000 in the past year - the majority because offenders were untraceable.

It is owed £6.4m in total - up £800,000 from the end of the financial year 2002.

She said: "We are trying to improve the information that is collected before somebody is sent a court summons."

Philip Littlewood, head of finance for North Yorkshire Magistrates Courts Committee, said it was one of the better performing areas when it came to enforcement, but was still owed more than £2.8m.

The northern group of magistrates courts committees recently met to discuss the issue of enforcement while Inspector Denis Hogan, of Durham Constabulary's community justice department, said police were looking at their procedures to see if there were any loopholes that could be closed.

But he added: "There are limits on how many checks an officer can physically carry out on an individual in the time available when they are arrested and processed."

Civilian enforcement officers are able to make checks on the police national computer and with the Department of Work and Pensions to trace a person's whereabouts.

But if these are exhausted the fine is written off in many cases.

Last year a report by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee found that £148m - or 41 per cent - of penalties were written off or cancelled either because the criminal could not pay or could not be traced