Nottingham City Council to spend £600k on cameras to enforce new rules on 4 roads

Nottingham City Council will spend cash from bus lane fines to buy cameras that will enforce new rules for city motorists. The city council was granted extra enforcement powers to punish drivers committing traffic offences in October last year and the authority has now approved spending £600k to fit new Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras to impose them.

The money will be used to install and use the cameras over the next three years, a council report said. They will oversee four city locations that were highlighted as hotspots for unsafe and inconsiderate driving by a consultation in 2022, with drivers risking a fine of £70 if they break the rules.

The powers, which were previously only held by police, will be used to ban motorists from making U-turns at Maid Marian Way's junction with Friar Lane and from driving down the pedestrianised part of the Victoria Embankment in front of the war memorial. They also prohibit people from turning right onto Arkwright Street from the junction of Sheriffs Way and Queens Road as well as from driving on the pedestrianised part of Shakespeare Street at Nottingham Trent University's city campus.

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Fines for offending motorists will be reduced to £35 if paid within 21 days. "The infrastructure will support highway safety which is a key component of the new powers," a council officer said in a report on the decision to approve the spend.

The purchase and maintenance of the new cameras will be paid for using cash collected from motorists who have entered bus lanes in the city. The money would be taken out of a ring-fenced reserve of more than three million pounds generated by the fines given to city drivers, which can only be used on transport improvements.

The council's financial department explained that as a result there would be no negative impact on its stretched finances. A council spokesperson said: "Nottingham City Council has now formally accepted the power to enforce against moving traffic offences, which will help us to take action to make roads safer without waiting for accidents to happen.

“The results of our consultation and other feedback strongly indicates that residents want safer streets and for the minority of rule-flouting drivers to be held accountable.” Due to the city council's dire financial state the purchase of the new cameras will have to be approved by its spend control board, but this is expected to be given.