Updates to the UK Speed Camera Tolerances

The Metropolitan Police has announced that its speed cameras are lowering their threshold, increasing the rate of fines across the UK. The leniency change applies only to speed cameras in the London area but is due to impact hundreds of thousands of UK drivers.

The tolerance has been lowered from 10% plus 3mph to 10% plus 2mph. To use multiple examples, rather than being able to travel no more than 25mph in a 20mph zone, or 36mph in a 30mph zone, the reduction means they are now only likely to get away with 24mph in a 20mph zone or 35mph in a 30mph zone. While it does not sound too impactful, it makes a difference in practice.

Breaking the speed limit by any margin is punishable by penalty points on your driver’s licence, fines and even prosecution in extreme cases. However, the UK’s police force does offer this degree of leniency to accommodate for the eye-reading of speedometers, which can be inaccurate when drivers are looking down at their dashboards.

The decrease in threshold is likely due to its potential to generate more income for councils, but also because of the increase in digital dashboards with computer-measure speedometers that not only have pinpoint accuracy but also use raw numbers rather than a far less readable needle. These unmistakable readings, as well as the increased inclusion of speed-limiting and cruise control technology, means there are far fewer excuses for speeding.

The London-based Met Police has previously reduced the speeding restrictions in 2019, though that reduction was more clandestine than this announcement, and was only discovered after an investigation by the Times found a sharp increase in speeding fines. This likely prompted the organisation to be more clear in its communications this time around.

The Met Police has reiterated that, regardless of the news on the speed camera enforcement threshold, drivers should stick to the speed limit on the road they’re using anyway.

Keep in mind that the Met Police only covers the London area, with over 800 cameras. This only makes up around 11% of all cameras in the UK, the rest of which are controlled by other councils which may have different tolerances and may not even be public information. With this in mind, it is best to apply the Met Police’s advice – stick to the signposted speed limits and avoid the hassle of speeding fines.

While it remains to be seen how the change will affect drivers, one area that is impacting them greatly is car leasing, which benefits their finances and removes the need to pay the full price of a car. At cars2buy, we are the UK’s one number car lease aggregator, and make the process of acquiring a brand new car on lease that much quicker. We have thousands of lease offers from hundreds of trusted partners across the UK, so you can be sure that every deal is one you can go ahead with in full confidence. Many new models come with speed-limiting technology to help you tackle speed cameras, and thanks to cars2buy leases, you can drive one during the best years of its life and pay a set monthly fee.