Not enough done to police non-local licence plates

Whenever I am on Guernsey roads I see vehicles with ‘foreign’ number plates, many of these vehicles have GB on the registration plate. However, several of the GB cars also have a local insurance certificate on the inside of the windscreen, which shows they are resident in Guernsey and not transient.

The law regarding the registration of motor vehicles in Guernsey is clear enough. If you are coming to reside in Guernsey and are bringing a vehicle with you, then that vehicle has to be registered and have Guernsey number plates fitted within 14 days of arriving in the island.

The registration fee is £42 plus emission charges. Those charges can be considerable. One of my neighbours recently bought a car in Jersey and brought it to Guernsey – the registration and emission charges put his bill from the VRLD at over £600.

When I was a youngster I would have said that we were over-policed. In the ’50s and ’60s, getting your name in the Press for the wrong things was a mark against you forever. Though getting caught for speeding did not seriously damage anyone’s credibility, driving without insurance was a thing that no self-respecting Guern would do.

At a recent count it was estimated that Britain had over one million uninsured drivers on UK roads. I cannot comprehend a number like that, but from time to time, usually after they have been involved in an incident, imported drivers are found not only to have no insurance but in some cases have never had a driving licence. So this police strategy is not only putting people at risk but is costing the island possibly hundreds of thousands of pounds in lost revenue.

I don’t know how many ‘foreign’ registered vehicles there are on our roads – someone must know.

We used to be proud of our island. It was kept clean and we had a good degree of law and order, though we have always had our home-grown criminals.

As a member of the older generation of Guerns who kept their noses clean, so to speak, I and many of my old mates feel that we are being let down. A situation like this can lead to a ‘them and us’ attitude arising out of the fact that some will pay but some will choose not to. Many good people come to Guernsey with the intention of fitting in and become valued members of our community. This is not an attack on them.

It is the job of our police to enforce the law. There must be a reason why these offenders are not held to account. If the chief of police sets this agenda then he is not fulfilling his duty to all those living in Guernsey.

I would urge all law-abiding people who live in Guernsey to tell their deputies to put pressure on those who are in a position to enforce the law, before things become more slipshod regarding law enforcement on our roads.

Name and address withheld.

Editor’s footnote: Sergeant Tom Marshall of the Roads Policing Unit responds: Your reader makes a number of different observations on different topics within their letter. Clearly there is no policy whereby Guernsey Police ‘protect lawbreakers’. We regularly carry out enquiries in relation to the incorrect registration of vehicles on our roads and work closely with our colleagues at Guernsey Driver & Vehicle Licensing in this regard.

Similarly, driving without insurance is a serious offence, which we will continue to deal with robustly.

So far this year, 19 offenders have been held to account and convicted in court for driving without insurance and full statistics are published annually each year.

We will continue to carry out fair and impartial investigations into all areas of road policing, including speeding, drink-driving, holding mobile phones while driving, seat belt offences and checks into the roadworthiness of vehicles. Our officers act proactively on all of these matters, while continuing to service the needs of the day to day policing requirements across the island.

If you reader would like to make contact with us to make an official statement, including evidence such as the registration numbers, locations and times these vehicles were seen, then we will investigate accordingly.