Tory-controlled Swindon Council has become the first council in the country to threaten to scrap all its speed cameras. Councillors are currently reviewing their membership of the Wiltshire and Swindon Safety Camera Partnership, which costs the council around £400,000 a year. Council leader, Roderick Bluh, said it was better to prevent motorists from speeding than catching them on camera. And cabinet member for highways, Cllr Peter Greenhalgh, said the council would prefer to spend the money on ‘local safety measures'. ‘The Government expects councils like us to invest all the money into partnership schemes, but I think enough is enough,' said Cllr Greenhalgh. Shadow local government spokesman, Eric Pickles, was reported last week as having told Conservative councils ‘to say no' to demands from the Labour Government. But a Tory spokesman said rumours that Mr Pickles had told Conservative councils not to co-operate were ‘incorrect and malicious'. South Swindon MP Anne Snelgrove said the council was ‘playing politics with lives'. ‘The council's finances are in a poor shape and it wants to use the fines from speed cameras to prop them up,' she said.
