Yet again, I am having to respond to a Liberal Democrat article in your newspaper, this one by Hertfordshire county councillor Sara Bedford, headlined ‘Police should access county speed details’ (April 5), to let readers know the true facts.

READ MORE: Hertfordshire County Council is 'failing' to hand speeding information over to police

Throughout Hertfordshire, we have approximately 230 Speed Indicator Devices, which have been installed mainly in response to requests from local county councillors representing their residents, concerned about excessive speeds. They are an important means of improving road safety, but are only designed to educate drivers and encourage more responsible driving. They also collect speeding data, but this is corrupted by several factors and, as such, it is impossible to rely on for enforcement purposes, although once we have converted the data into a readable format, county councillors can request access, and can share this with interested parties, including the police – such access can be as much as four times a year per site.

If access to the data is not requested, it will not be collected or retained, as this would be a gross waste of taxpayers’ money – imagine us paying contractors to regularly download data from all 230 devices, most of which will never be used!

I was at a meeting recently with the Police and Crime Commissioner, and the local chief inspector, when he agreed that the data can provide useful information on timings of significant speeding issues, which can inform their enforcement activities, but once the police have this intelligence, there would be no need for future data analysis. Again, I will emphasise, the data cannot be used for specific enforcement.

Cllr Bedford’s comments follow her question at the meeting of the county council on 26 March but, if she had listened to the verbal response from Cllr Sangster, or waited for my formal response, which was sent to all councillors shortly after, she would have been able to offer a more accurate and balanced article. She would also have been able to assure readers that the County Council has appropriate equipment to collect speed and volume data, if the need is established, infinitely more accurate than Speed Indicator Devices.

Phil Bibby

Executive Member Highways and Environment