driving bans purge

PEOPLE who do not pay their court fines could be banned from driving or told to complete community service as part of a Government crackdown.

These penalties may be imposed to try and collect the £3.6 million in unpaid fines owed to magistrates courts across East Sussex.

A total of £617,675 was written off as uncollectable in the quarter to December 1999 and a further £774,792 has been collected.

This compares with the previous quarter's outstanding amount of £4,039,856 with £871,543 written off as uncollectable.

Confident

Chief court administrator Patricia Wilson, based at Lewes Magistrates Court, said: "The taskforce we have been working with will hopefully make the figures look even healthier for the next quarter.

"We are confident that after recent blitzes in Hastings and Eastbourne and new initiatives from the Government that we will get the figures of uncollected fines down."

East Sussex launched a major crackdown on uncollected fines last year, with teams using records to target specific areas.

Teams carry out house-to-house inquiries in a

particular area with the support of the police.

They may also be helped by two pilot schemes in Norfolk and Greater Manchester which experimented with banning offenders from driving, imposing community service orders and curfew orders. The Government is waiting for the results of penalties made available under the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997 to see whether they will have an impact on the huge sum of unpaid fines.

Brighton Pavilion MP David Lepper has also been in contact with the Lord Chancellor's Department and the Home Office to see what action they are taking to support the courts.

Jane Kennedy, MP, parliamentary secretary to the Lord Chancellor's Department, told Mr Lepper the Access to Justice Act 1999 allowed the courts to access information on the latest address of anyone who is not paying their fines.

She said the courts would look at social security records to find out the most recent address of offenders, allowing enforcement officers to track people down.

Mr Lepper said he would be asking the

Home Office when it expected to get the results of the pilot and whether they would be extend-

ing the scheme to East Sussex.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.