Title

Motoring Offenders proceedings at all courts by police force area and sentence

Last update

15 February 2023 15 February 2023

Next update

December 2023 (Provisional)

Publishing organisation

Welsh Government

Designation

National Statistics

Lowest level of geographical disaggregation

Police authorities

Geographical coverage

England and Wales

Languages covered

English and Welsh

Data licensing

You may use and re-use this data free of charge in any format or medium, under the terms of the Open Government License - see http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence

General description

This annual statistical bulletin contains data relating to motoring offences on:
• Court proceedings against motoring offenders
• Civil parking enforcements, carried out by local authorities, are not covered in this bulletin.

Equivalent data for England can be found at the links for the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice. Transport Scotland publish the number of motor vehicle offences recorded by the police by type of offence in the ‘Road Transport Vehicles’ chapter of the compendium publication titled “Scottish Transport Statistics”: (http://www.transport.gov.scot/statistics/scottish-transport-statistics-all-editions). The Scottish Government publishes the number of people proceeded against in court for motor vehicle offences in the Statistical Bulletin titled “Criminal Proceedings in Scotland”: (http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Crime-Justice/Datasets/DatasetsCrimProc).
The Police Service of Northern Ireland produces statistics on fixed penalty notices: (https://www.psni.police.uk/inside-psni/Statistics/fixed-penalty-notice-fpn-and-discretionary-disposal-statistics-for-traffic-offences/). The Northern Ireland Courts and Tribunals Service publish the number of defendants disposed of in the magistrates’ courts for motoring offences: (http://www.courtsni.gov.uk/en-GB/Services/Statistics%20and%20Research/Pages/default.aspx).

Data collection and calculation

Data Source
The information on court proceedings reproduces the statistics compiled by the Ministry of Justice in their criminal justice series (https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/criminal-justice-statistics).

Coverage
The coverage in ‘Police Powers and Procedures’ includes the use of police powers to issue fixed penalty notices for motoring offences. This is broken down by offence type and how they were dealt with (eg. penalty paid or fine registered at court). The data presented are drawn from returns from police forces in England and Wales. The figures also include notices issued by police employed traffic wardens for parking offences. It should be stressed here that most traffic wardens are now employed by local authorities, and their activities are not covered here.
Below is a list of the local authorities in Wales who have taken over the responsibility for parking enforcement and when this occurred:

Neath Port Talbot - 1 June 1999
Carmarthenshire - 1 June 1999
Denbighshire - 1 July 2004
Conwy - 1 Sept 2006
Gwynedd - 1 April 2007
Isle of Anglesey - 1 April 2007
Wrexham - 1 March 2008
Swansea - 1 Sept 2008
Cardiff - 5 July 2010
Pembrokeshire - 1 Feb 2011
Powys - 1 April 2011
Merthyr Tydfil - 11 Jan 2012
Ceredigion - 4 June 2012
Rhondda Cynon Taff - 1 Aug 2012
Bridgend - 1 April 2013
Vale of Glamorgan - 1 April 2013
Flintshire - 1 Oct 2013

Statistics on Vehicle Defect Rectification notices for motoring offences no longer appear in this bulletin as they were withdrawn from 2009.

Frequency of publication

Annual

Data reference periods

2006 to 2021

Statistical quality

The statistics are used both within and outside the Welsh Government to monitor trends in driving offences and as a baseline for further analysis. Breath test statistics are used to measure the effectiveness of drink–drive campaigns by police forces.

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 courts and 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.

Weblinks

https://gov.wales/motoring-offences; https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/criminal-justice-statistics-quarterly

Keywords

Motoring Offenders, Court Type, Police Force Area, Sentence

Name

tran0129