Go ahead given for new CCTV cameras and powers to enforce traffic offences

Councillors agreed at a meeting in Hendon Town Hall on Tuesday night to take over responsibility for the offences - known as moving traffic contraventions - from the Metropolitan Police, which has not enforced them.

The proposals will see 50 cameras, costing £1.4million, placed around schools and busy junctions to catch drivers breaking restrictions such as ignoring no left or right turn signs and driving in the wrong direction in a one-way street.

Fines will be introduced from January next year.

Barnet council hopes the measures will increase road safety, as well as to keep traffic moving and reduce air pollution.

Once the cameras have fixed problems in a particular area, they will be moved to the next location, the authority has said.

A Labour amendment to the proposals, which called for officers to focus enforcement on “making Barnet roads safer rather than income generation”, was defeated at Tuesday’s meeting.

The party’s environment spokesman Councillor Alan Schneiderman said: “It should be to make our roads safer and not another easy way to make money by treating motorists as cash cows.”

Conservative councillor Dean Cohen, chairman of the environment committee, said the report clearly stated it was about safety, and added: “His so-called amendment is just playing politics.”

Cllr Cohen also accused Cllr Schneiderman of doing a “U-turn”, after the proposals were backed by Labour at last month’s environment committee.

Parking campaigner Paul Pearson last month criticised the proposals as a “blatant” money-making scheme.
He said: “Motorists in Barnet need to watch out, and they need to appeal if they get one of these tickets they think is unfair. No one really knowingly breaks the rules.”

Cllr Cohen previously said: “By using available enforcement legislation in key areas of the borough we will be able to make sure that drivers are obeying the highway code and not risking injury to pedestrians and other road users.”