Plans for police ticket machines

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Police could be given hand-held ticketing machines to issue fixed-penalty fines for minor offences, under a Ministry of Justice (MoJ) plan.

The British Transport Police, who are already trialling the machines, say they have cut bureaucracy and given officers an extra hour on the beat.

The plan will be in an MoJ consultation paper on the subject of redesigning the ticketing system for fixed penalties.

The offences for which fixed-penalty fines are issued will stay the same.

Time saver

An MoJ spokesman said: "It doesn't make any difference to who gets the fixed-penalty notice, it's just a different means of administering it and it cuts down on the amount of bureaucracy."

Types of offences that warrant fixed penalty notices Dropping litter Minor graffiti offences or fly postingNot clearing up dog foulingWhere excessive noise is coming from a private residence during the night

He said the types of offences fixed-penalty fines were issued for, such as vandalism and anti-social behaviour, and how often they were used instead of court proceedings, would remain the same.

Fixed-penalty notices are fines of £50 for most offences, but £100 for noise-related offences.

An MoJ spokeswoman said the consultation paper was about to be launched.

But some of the details, including whether the system would be rolled out nationally had not yet been decided.

A report on the scheme is expected in February.

Leading the drive for the on-the-spot tickets are the British Transport Police (BTP), who have had about 400 personal digital assistants (PDAs) on trial since October 2006.

We want to keep our officers doing what they are supposed to do which is being out on patrol British Transport Police

The system is not yet set up for printing on-the-spot fines.

The machines are used to carry out criminal record checks from a centralised data base, and update police computers with information from people who have been stopped by the police.

In 2006/7 they were used in about 30,000 stops under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act.

A BTP spokeswoman said: "The advantage from our point of view is that our officers are out longer because our officers don't have to come back earlier to report.

"We want to keep our officers doing what they are supposed to do which is being out on patrol."

Individual choice

Lancashire Police are also trialling PDAs on motorway patrols.

A Home Office spokeswoman said she believed it was up to individual forces to decide whether or not to take part in the trial of PDAs.

She said: "It's not a Home Office project, but if it's something that assists the reduction of bureaucracy then we would react positively to that."