Speeding may be necessary

Ambulances racing to emergency call-outs often generate several automatic fines as they pass safety cameras at high speed.

Health trusts do not have to pay the fines where they can prove they were responding to an emergency.

But just dealing with the paperwork can take up valuable staff time and effort each week.

We are working closely with the Home Office to provide a workable solution which will help in aim of reducing the level bureaucracy within public services. Department of Health

A Department of Health spokesman said: "The DoH has been made aware of the fact that a number of ambulance trusts are currently having problems with speeding tickets that are automatically issued via safety cameras.

"We are working closely with the Home Office to provide a workable solution which will help in aim of reducing the level bureaucracy within public services."

Robert Lee, of Staffordshire Ambulance Service, said they received more than 4,410 speeding tickets in the last year.

They had so far been unable to justify the speeding in fewer than 10 incidents, meaning fines in all the other cases were eventually waived.

Mr Lee said a member of staff spent up to a day each week dealing with the tickets, at an estimated cost of �60.

He said: "We do receive a significant number of tickets, but we expect that as we have a lot more speeding cameras in the county compared to other areas, and that is not necessarily a bad thing.

"We support any action to cut accident and injury on the roads."

Common sense approach

East Anglia ambulance service described the tickets as an "irritation".

But the region received a significantly lower number of speed camera tickets. In 2003, Cambridgeshire had 962 tickets, while Suffolk had 57 and Norfolk just 14.

A spokesman said: "This is because in Suffolk and Norfolk, if the authorities see from the picture that it is an ambulance and the blue light is on, they will not send out the ticket.

"We would like to see this kind of common sense used across the country to reduce the number of tickets sent out which then have to be dealt with."

The trust estimated that every 10 tickets received took around two hours to deal with, costing the service about �5,000 a year.

London Ambulance Service said it received around 10 tickets a week.

A spokesman said: "It appears the police are taking a sensible approach and when they see it is an ambulance they are not issuing tickets."

But he said dealing with the tickets they did receive was a "time consuming process".

The Crown Prosecution Service called for a review of the rules on speeding ambulances last year following the case of the ambulance driver caught doing more than 100 mph.

Mick Ferguson, 56, of the West Yorkshire ambulance service was taking a liver to Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridgeshire when he was clocked at 104 mph on the A1 near Grantham, Lincolnshire.

The charge was formally dropped by Grantham magistrates.