MANAGING SAFETY CAMERA OFFENCES

Norfolk & Suffolk Constabularies’ Central Ticket Office (CTO) deals with thousands of safety camera offences across Norfolk and Suffolk each month.  

Previously, if someone receiving a Notice of Intended Prosecution (NIP) wanted to confirm they were the driver, they had to complete the paper form and post it back. It could be inconvenient for the driver and create lots of admin for the CTO.  

Traffic Justice Manager Phil Payne explains: 

“For each form we’d get back, we’d have to open it, date stamp it, review it, scan it in and then store it. It took about 4-5 minutes per form, and they made up the bulk of 2-4 boxes of mail we’d get each day.”  

MAKING IT EASIER FOR DRIVERS

Norfolk & Suffolk has used NEC Enforcement’s Public Access since 2019. It enables people who’ve received a NIP to review the safety camera evidence online and, if they were not the driver, to provide the details of who was. The system had already cut down on phone calls, emails and post, so the force wanted to extend it to people wishing to confirm they were the driver and become as paperless as possible. 

Norfolk & Suffolk went live with the new ‘Online Admissions’ tool in October 2022, and it was an immediate success.  

David Hardy is a Project Officer in the CTO:  

“Within 10 minutes of adding the Online Admissions facility to our Public Access website, drivers were using it. That was before we’d even added the details to the NIPs. From the 1st December to the 31st January, 73% of the people who confirmed they were the driver did it online using Public Access.”

SMOOTH GO-LIVE AND BEYOND

To deliver a smooth go-live, NEC’s team worked closely with the force’s IT and CTO team. This has continued since, with NEC’s experts always on hand to adjust the tool to meet Norfolk & Suffolk’s needs. This includes tweaking the text that displays on the different fields to match the style preferred by the force.  

“People expect to do things online now,” says Phil, “and Online Admissions makes this process easy. Not only that, it’s doing the work of two people for us so we can all stay focused on delivering a great service.”