CONCERNED by speeding through my village, as I said in my letter (HAS, Mar 28), I submitted a Freedom of Information request on January 3 to Durham Constabulary Information Rights and Disclosure Unit to find out how many of its Fixed Penalty Notices had been cancelled (one of the main results for cancellation is police error).

It took 12 weeks and the threat of a referral to the Data Protection Commissioner to get the information requested.

I was interested because of a recent Home Office survey for the year ended March 2017 which showed that 2.2 million tickets had been issued nationally of which 250,000 were cancelled. In that context, I now learn that Durham issued 7,758 tickets of which 10 were cancelled.

The overall ratio of cancellations to issues, in percentage terms, for the various forces, ranged from 28 per cent to one per cent. Durham’s works out at 0.001 per cent. This is a truly remarkable result that could not be dragged from the Chief Constable or the Chief and Crime Commissioner Ron Hogg.

Would this reluctance be because Durham’s results are something of an embarrassment to the force’s roads enforcement policy?

Furthermore, it should be noted that I received a letter dated October 21, 2018, from the police that showed there were 528 endorsable offences for the Durham Constabulary force area for the period January 1, 2017, to March 1, 2018.

And it should be noted that Durham police has thought it necessary recently to have additional ‘blitz’ campaigns to reduce dangerous driving.

Comments from the Chief Constable or Mr Hogg would be appreciated.

E McKeown, High Pittington