Hundreds of reports showing video footage of alleged dangerous and careless driving on the roads of the West Midlands are being missed by police struggling to process evidence in time, concerning official police data has shown.
road.cc can reveal that of 2,017 Operation Snap reports made by the public to West Midlands Police in April, the most recent month for which data is available, 65 per cent failed to have any action taken before the 14-day window police forces have to issue a Notice of Intended Prosecution had passed. Operation Snap is the police initiative to prosecute road users using footage submitted by members of the public
Under the Road Traffic Offenders Act, police forces are legally required to serve the registered keeper of a vehicle a Notice of Intended Prosecution (NIP) within 14 days of an alleged offence. West Midlands Police is failing to take action within this 14-day window in the majority of reports made by members of the public, raising concerns that instances of dangerous and careless driving are going unpunished.
According to West Midlands Police’s Operation Snap data there were 2,017 reports from members of the public in April 2025. While camera cyclists are often the subject of many articles and discussions in the media and online, 63 per cent of reports came from car drivers, with cyclists submitting 392 reports (19 per cent).
The force took no action in 73 per cent of cases. In cases where action was taken, 140 warning letters, 226 fixed-penalty notices, 109 education courses were issued, with 24 people (one per cent) taken to court.
However, when breaking down the 1,476 cases where no further action was taken, the data shows that 1,321 (90 per cent) are described as having missed the 14-day window for a NIP being issued. Just 12 of these 1,321 cases that missed the 14-day window were due to a late submission by the reporter, West Midlands Police admitting that the rest were their fault and that the force is struggling to keep up with “high demand”.
Back in 2023, West Midlands Police was criticised after it was revealed that 286 reports from cyclists resulted in just one prosecution. Senior figures admitted it needed to review how reports are managed, but two years on little seems to have changed.
It is worth pointing out that West Midlands Police is taking action in more cases involving cyclists’ footage than back then, 63 fixed penalty notices, three court cases, 30 warning letters and 33 education cases coming from the 392 reports from cyclists in April. However, 91 per cent of the cases where no further action was taken from a cyclist’s video were because the 14-day window had passed, raising questions about how many instances of dangerous or careless driving are going unpunished.
Chief Superintendent Andy Parsons repeated the force’s claim of two years ago, that it is “constantly working to improve the way that submissions are reviewed” and insisted officers are prioritising the most serious offences amid “a backlog of submissions”.
“Operation Snap continues to make a real difference to road safety in the West Midlands, with submissions increasing to more than 2,000 each month,” he told us. “We are constantly working to improve the way that submissions are reviewed, to ensure that we are prioritising more serious offences and taking the right action.
“We have worked hard to reduce a backlog of submissions, while increasing the number of cases where we have been able to take positive action against drivers. The Operation Snap team is now working more closely with Roads Policing Unit colleagues, who are reviewing footage that has been sent in. The size of the Op Snap team remains under review as the number of submissions continues to increase.
“We remain absolutely committed to working with the public, and partners, to bring down the number of people killed and seriously injured on our roads. I’d like to thank everyone who is playing their part in this by sending footage to Operation Snap.”
Back in 2023, we shared a case involving a road.cc reader who submitted video footage of a close pass, followed by the motorist slamming on their brakes and appearing to deliberately reverse at the rider. As with hundreds of other submissions each month, West Midlands Police failed to take action as the two-week time frame had expired.
Amid West Midlands Police’s aforementioned much-criticised low Operation Snap prosecution rate, the then-West Midlands walking and cycling commissioner Adam Tranter wrote to the force’s chief constable, Simon Guildford, raising concerns.
The force said it needed to adapt to Operation Snap’s popularity and cited a “50 per cent increase in third-party reporting”.
Hinting at the strain on resources, West Midlands Police noted that reviews take an “average of 60 minutes to run from receipt to conclusion”, and were being carried out by three business support assistants. Two years on, the message remains that the force is adapting and needs to review the way submissions are dealt with.
West Midlands Police’s poor record with Operation Snap submissions remains somewhat surprising considering the force pioneered the the award-winning and now-ubiquitous Operation Close Pass, the work of Steve Hudson and Mark Hodson.
Martin Price, chair of campaign group Better Streets for Birmingham, said: “This new historical data showing a decline in performance of Operation Snap is concerning.
“Every report that slides past the 14-day threshold represents another half an hour of public time wasted. This amounts to a whopping 655 hours in April 2025 alone. Making a report to operation snap is no quick task: clipping the footage and then filling in a lengthy and complicated online form. It is clear that the current police process is inefficient. They have now ceased sending emails that confirm when a submission has been processed. This is causing many who regularly submit footage of dangerous driving to stop.
“It is important that capacity, processes and feedback is improved, otherwise we’ll soon arrive back to square one while dangerous driving remain rife.”
26 thoughts on “Under-fire police force missed 14-day window to take action in two-thirds of reports by cyclists, data reveals”
Great job road.cc – good to
Great job road.cc – good to see this investigated and the police held to account 👏
I’m “lucky” enough to be a
I’m “lucky” enough to be a regular cyclist around Birmingham, driving standards are appalling at times and this makes not great reading. A good few of my submissions have been classed as the 14 days threshold meaning the motorists I have reported have got away with it. There has been a roads emergency decalred here in Birmingham https://betterstreetsforbirmingham.org/ I haven’t seen any improvements in driving standards. Whilst I’m not happy with the Police response, the lack of funding since 2010 has played a bit part in making our roads less safe. There was a proposal from our last West Midlands Mayor for the fines to go straight to West Midlands Police to fund Operation Snap instead of central government, then it could possibly become self funding.
Just useless isn’t it. The
Just useless isn’t it. The Met seem to have sorted any staffing issues, the vast majority of my reports get actioned
If WMP are getting 2k a month, that’s 100 per working day, surely you only need 10 civilian staff working to complete that amount? Is there not contestable road safety funding they could apply for in order to pay for staff, it must be by faaaaar the most cost effective form of road safety policing
Lukei 1, Another point worth
Lukei 1, Another point worth considering, were they to properly resource and improve prosecution rate, word would soon get out, driver behavior would improve and the volume of reports would reduce. So improved road safety and reduced resourcing cost.
Win win, what’s not to like. But I don’t expect the dinosaurs in charge of the police to think like that.
How do you know the Met are
How do you know the Met are actioning your reports? I have never had any communication back other than the inital receipt email. Lack of information is deterring me from continuing to report.
rct wrote:
If you don’t hear anything beyond the acknowledgement of receipt then that means they’re not doing anything with your report. If they are going to take action you will get an email saying “Following identification of the driver, a decision will be made as to what the appropriate next steps will be in terms of a disposal for the offence” and telling you that you won’t hear anything further unless you’re needed in court.
Looks like I’ve been wasting
Looks like I’ve been wasting my time for the last 6 years of submissions then. 🙁
Looks like I’ve been wasting
Looks like I’ve been wasting my time for the last 6 years of submissions then
Yes you have, except that we have to do it in the (forlorn) hope of better days to come. There’s nothing that the malevolent, anti-cyclist bastards would like better than that their strong and persistent disincentives to reporting attacks on cyclists achieved the police objective of stopping such reports altogether.
rct wrote:
The Met action about 75% of my reports (300+) so you must be either doing something wrong with the videos or reporting things that they cannot prosecute
The Met action about 75% of
The Met action about 75% of my reports (300+)…
Oh no they didn’t! A lot of these claims turn up, but when people are asked for the video of the offence and convincing evidence of the ‘action’, they go silent.
rct wrote:
Seems odd, I get about 50% with further action. Sorry if it’s obvious but have you checked replies aren’t ending up in your junk mail?
Whilst I used to get an email
Whilst I used to get an email from the Met police indicating what action they were taking, ie NFA, warning letter, NIP/court…
As I understand it now, and going by their communications, they are not providing any info unless the case goes to court and they require you to attend.
I used to get an email from
I used to get an email from the Met police indicating what action they were taking, ie NFA, warning letter, NIP/court…
Those emails were worthless anyway – they were only stating what the police ‘intended’ to happen – not what actually did happen. That gives them extensive opportunities for dodges to thwart their ‘intentions’, and you wouldn’t have heard anything about the ‘unable to trace keeper/ driver’ etc
Same here, they won’t give
Same here, they won’t give details, just that they are taking action. I’ve never had a notification of NFA, they’ve always just said in the initial acknowledgement of receipt that if you’ve heard nothing within six weeks then it’s NFA.
They did provide me, after much badgering, with a link to a spreadsheet with the results of all camera submissions for 2023/4 but that link now doesn’t work and the accessible database they promised was in development has never materialised.
They did provide me, after
They did provide me, after much badgering, with a link to a spreadsheet with the results of all camera submissions for 2023/4 but that link now doesn’t work and the accessible database they promised was in development has never materialised
This all makes me doubt (even more, if that’s possible) that these advice letters (often claimed to be warning letters) the police claim to have sent to offenders have any merit at all- because the police don’t seem to know what was done about offences. In other words, when police officer B looks up (if he can be bothered) the record of an offending driver, is it at all likely that the police system will identify that the driver has committed the same offence previously when it was dealt with by police officer A. And that’s in the same force! There’s no hope at all when these offences are committed in different force areas. So when the police turn up at some vanishingly rare ‘court case’ and they say ‘the driver has an unblemished record’, do we even pretend to believe that?
“prioritising more serious
“prioritising more serious offences” means more reports rejected, NFAs or warning letters, so all theyre doing is reducing the NIP workload by putting more barriers up to people reporting this stuff and taking action.
which isnt the outcome we want, even if the stats end up looking nicer.
but a method I suspect alot of police forces are using for operation snap now.
The police are failing to
The police are failing to provide an effective deterrent against careless and dangerous driving; both in general, but particularly when cyclists are the victim.
I would like to see this aspect of enforcement taken off the police and given to local councils or a new national civillian organisation to prosecute. They seem to be doing a good job prosecuting moving traffic offences such as box junction and bus lane infringements. So I would like to see them have a go at prosecuting cycling close passes. All it would take is a small change to the legislation…
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/councils-in-england-to-get-new-powers-over-traffic-offences/
Perhaps I am missing
Perhaps I am missing something but could they not extend the NIP to 28 days or longer with political will, or is it because the powers to be want a nice loophole for drivers?
I think it’s simply that
I think it’s simply that police don’t want more of these reported because they’re already busy.
In fact I’d bet the entire legal system would be happy with ways to find fewer offences to consider!
Of course there is likely a fair bit of “concentrate on the *serious* stuff” and even some “silly sods shouldn’t put themselves in harm’s way by cycling on the roads”.
could they not extend the NIP
could they not extend the NIP to 28 days or longer with political will, or is it because the powers to be want a nice loophole for drivers?
The 14 days dodge is among the most beloved of the police, along with ‘he didn’t see you’, ‘he didn’t mean to do it’ and ‘it was only a momentary loss of concentration’. It’s the police who would be most opposed to this Utopian proposal – there’s nothing that suits them better than the restriction of resources to OpSnap so that they can always say that most submissions had to be abandoned because of the handy 14 day limit.
This is very disappointing as
This is very disappointing as WMP really seemed to be getting their act together since the terrible results in 2023. I was hearing about most of my reports from 6 different PCs (not all at once!) until June this year when the updates stopped completely.
There were a couple of reports this year where they told me the 14 days had run out and asked me to always report on the same day and one PC also requested the videos be only 2 minutes long instead of the usual 4 minutes I was sending and that I use a much lower quality as the downlod speed at their end is terrible.
On the positive side the council are claiming a lot of the 30 and 40mph limits in Birmingham will be dropping by 10mph by the end of the year although whether our drivers will pay this any attention is another matter. I’ve seen a huge increase in cars (mostly BMWs) with no front plates and ghost rear plates this year and even a couple with no plates so the fear of getting caught is just not there.
NOtotheEU wrote:
Maybe this explains the change in response – AOL recently turned off their dial-up service…
I’ve seen a huge increase in
I’ve seen a huge increase in cars (mostly BMWs) with no front plates…
Not just cars- this is the latest view of PO64 AUR, approaching the (rare even in Lancashire) 10 years No VED milestone with pride. No front plate, rear plate deliberately hidden deep under the vehicle, occupants shown not wearing the fitted seatbelts, police informed, DVLA informed via a letter to my MP, all with zero effect
NOtotheEU wrote:
I was very pleased to see this on the way to work this morning.
By the looks of it, you be
By the looks of it, you be lucky to be doing 15, never mind 30.
It sounds like the video
It sounds like the video submissions are being processed inefficiently. 60 minutes per submission seems excessive and issues with download speeds are not a great excuse. With some process automation – dare I say AI – involved then this could be brought down to say 15 minutes or less. I would fully support any revenue earned by fines being used by forces to fund the processing.