Road Traffic Offences: Prosecutions
(asked on 29th January 2019) - View Source
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, pursuant to the Answer of 26 November 2018 to Question 194050 on Crown Prosecution Service: Staff, what the figure was for prosecutions for minor motoring offences (a) at the beginning of that period (b) at the end of that period.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) maintains a central record of prosecuted defendants by twelve Principal Offence Categories, including the category of Motoring Offences.
The table below shows the number of summary-only prosecutions at magistrates’ courts allocated to the Motoring Offences category for both the 12 months ending September 2008 and September 2018 and the change in both volume and percent.
| Year Ending September 2008 | Year Ending September 2018 | Volume change | % Change |
CPS Motoring Prosecution Caseload | 367,905 | 95,726 | -272,179 | -74.0% |
Data Source: Case Management Information System
It is not possible to disaggregate figures to show separately the volume and outcome of proceedings for individual offences within the Motoring Offences category.
While the number of overall prosecutions has decreased during the period, the highest fall in caseload has been in magistrates’ courts, where volumes reduced by 54.1%. This followed changes to the list of specified offences made in 2012 which transferred responsibility for prosecuting many low level motoring offences back to the police.