FOI/2036 - Speed Enforcement

Provision of information held by Northumbria Police made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the 'Act')

Thank you for your email received on the 10 December 2025 in which you made a request for access to certain information which may be held by Northumbria Police.

As you may be aware the purpose of the Act is to allow a general right of access to information held at the time of a request, by a Public Authority (including the Police), subject to certain limitations and exemptions.

We have now had the opportunity to fully consider your request, and we provide a response for your attention.

Following receipt of your request, searches were conducted with the Force Co-ordination and Operations Department of Northumbria Police. We can confirm that the information you have requested is held by Northumbria Police.

We are able to disclose the located information to you as follows.

You asked:

1. Please provide any policies, operational guidance, enforcement criteria, or internal documents held by your force that relate to speed-enforcement thresholds for fixed, mobile, or average-speed cameras.

As the information you have requested at this point is accessible by other means we have not provided you with a copy of the information and will rely on Section 21 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. You should therefore consider this a refusal notice for this part of your request.

We have provided an explanation to this exemption below.

Section 21 (1) - Information accessible by other means
Information which is reasonably accessible to the applicant is exempt information.

The information you have requested in relation to speed enforcement thresholds is freely available, for all to view, as it is published on the College of Policing website.  In order to aid and assist you further we have provided a link to the relevant pages below:

Speed-enforcement-disposal-guidance-2025.pdf

2. Specifically, please state whether your force adheres to the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) speed-tolerance guidance (often described as “10% + 2 mph”) or any alternative thresholds used for the purpose of determining when enforcement action is initiated.

Yes, however it should be noted that the police service now uses technology that enables it to prove that an offence has been committed as soon as a driver exceeds the relevant speed limit by a very small margin. Motorists will therefore be at risk of prosecution immediately they exceed any legal speed limit.

3. If exact thresholds are not disclosed to the public for operational reasons, please confirm whether this information is held and, if so, whether the force follows NPCC guidance, uses a different internal tolerance, or enforces strictly at the posted speed limit.

Not applicable – please see our response to point 2.