FOI reveals how West Yorkshire Police dealt with 277,069 speeding cases in 2025

A Freedom of Information request to West Yorkshire Police has produced one of the most detailed public datasets on UK speed enforcement ever released. The numbers show who gets a course, who gets points, who gets prosecuted, and how many drivers simply disappear from the process entirely.

West Yorkshire is one of England’s largest and most heavily policed regions. In 2025, its safety camera network (fixed cameras, mobile vans, and average speed systems) detected and processed a staggering 277,069 speeding offences. That is roughly one detected offence for every nine people in the county.

The data, released under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, breaks every one of those cases down by posted speed limit, excess speed band, and final outcome. It is a rare window into how the enforcement machine actually works at scale and the picture it reveals is more complicated than the simple “fine or course” narrative most drivers assume.

How the system is supposed to work

West Yorkshire Police confirmed they follow the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) speed enforcement disposal guidance, the same framework used by most forces in England and Wales. There are no local thresholds or supplementary rules in operation here.

The framework operates as a graduated ladder. At the lowest excess speeds, eligible drivers are offered a Speed Awareness Course as an alternative to prosecution. Step up a band and the outcome becomes a conditional fixed penalty (currently £100 and three penalty points). Go faster still, or be caught repeatedly, and the case goes to court.

On paper, it is a clean and rational system. The data shows what it looks like in practice across nearly 300,000 real cases.

The 30mph limit dominates the dataset

More than half of all detected offences occurred in 30mph zones, the speed limit covering the majority of residential streets, high streets, and urban roads across West Yorkshire. This is not surprising: there are more 30mph roads than any other limit, and they are where the most cameras are deployed.

Within 30mph zones alone, the data recorded 70,920 drivers completing a speed awareness course for travelling up to 9mph over the limit. That single outcome category (low-level urban speeding, educational disposal) accounts for more than a quarter of all detected cases in the entire dataset.

Courses are the system’s workhorse

Speed awareness courses clearly dominate at the lower end of the excess speed spectrum. The NPCC guidance makes courses available only within a specific band above the limit, and the data reflects this precisely: course completions appear almost exclusively in the “up to 9mph over” and “up to 14mph over” categories, then drop sharply.

What this table also shows is the sheer scale of prosecutions even at the lowest band. 16,124 drivers in 30mph zones travelling up to 9mph over the limit were prosecuted in 2025. That is not a trivial number, and it sits alongside 70,920 who took a course for the same speed range. The coexistence of these two outcomes in the same band requires explanation. The most likely cause is prior offending or repeat detection, which removes course eligibility under the NPCC framework.

The motorway picture is different

At 70mph (the national motorway and dual carriageway limit) the enforcement pattern shifts. Courses still dominate at low excess speeds (1,404 completions for up to 9mph over), but the fixed penalty and prosecution numbers climb steeply as excess speed increases.

Notably, the “Not Completed” figures at 70mph are remarkably low compared to 30mph zones. The cancellation figures are proportionally high, however. At the 10-14mph band, 1,959 cases were cancelled against 2,761 courses completed. That is a cancellation rate of nearly 40%, which warrants scrutiny.

The 26,317 cases that never resolved

Across the entire dataset, 26,317 cases ended in “Not Completed.” This category does not mean the offence was dismissed or the driver was cleared. It means the enforcement pipeline broke before a disposal outcome was recorded.

To understand why this matters, it helps to understand the process. When a camera detects a speeding vehicle, a Notice of Intended Prosecution (NIP) is generated and sent to the registered keeper. The keeper must then identify who was driving under Section 172 of the Road Traffic Act 1988. Only once the driver is confirmed can the force offer a course, issue a fixed penalty, or refer to court.

The 30mph zone alone accounts for 18,154 “Not Completed” cases. These are not small numbers. They represent a significant proportion of the enforcement workload that produced no outcome. In many cases, a failure to identify the driver likely triggered a more serious secondary offence: failing to provide driver details under s.172, which carries six penalty points and can be more punishing than the original speeding charge.

20mph zones: a story of their own

The 20mph data deserves attention in its own right. West Yorkshire recorded 17,395 detected offences in 20mph zones in 2025, a number that reflects the ongoing expansion of 20mph limits in urban areas. The outcomes skew heavily towards prosecution and fixed penalty even at low excess speeds, with 1,616 prosecutions and 5,697 fixed penalties at the “up to 9mph over” band.

This is because the NPCC course eligibility thresholds work differently at 20mph. The band within which a course can be offered is narrow, and a driver doing 31mph in a 20mph zone (just 11mph over) is likely facing fixed penalty or court rather than an educational alternative. The data appears to confirm this: only 11,693 courses were completed in 20mph zones, against 8,043 prosecutions across all bands.

What this data cannot tell us

The FOI response covers West Yorkshire only. It does not allow comparison with other forces, and it does not reveal how many of the prosecuted cases resulted in conviction, disqualification, or other outcomes beyond the initial referral. The cancellation category is not explained. The force’s data does not distinguish between cancellations due to camera evidence failing, incorrect keeper records, or other reasons.

This request was sent as part of a batch to ten forces. When further responses arrive, direct comparison will become possible: which forces are more course-heavy, which default to prosecution, and whether enforcement patterns differ meaningfully by geography. We have previously used FOI to examine how public bodies handle data rights and enforcement decisions, the same methodology applied to very different public interest questions. Our investigation into DVLA medical cannabis driving licence policy, for example, shows how FOI can surface operational guidance that is rarely made public any other way.

For now, the West Yorkshire dataset stands as a detailed and unusually transparent account of how speed enforcement operates at scale. The graduated model works broadly as designed. But within it are patterns (the scale of low-band prosecutions, the volume of unresolved cases, the cancellation rates on motorways) that merit further investigation.