As the manager of the fixed penalty support unit at Thames Valley Police, Bryan Pritchard oversees more than 155,000 speeding offences every year. As such, having the ability to process these quickly and efficiently is vital.
The team therefore utilise the StarTraq range of products which offer a series of solutions for those involved in traffic offence data management.
Thames Valley first employed the services of StarTraq in 2001 when they became the first UK police force to do so. Since then Thames Valley has become the benchmark for other forces from across the country, many of whom have visited the site to see how StarTraq works. This has led to StarTraq now working with a total of 13 forces.
Bryan comments: “The ability to dynamically see what is happening on our system is essential and StarTraq achieves this for us. This allows us to allocate our team members to specific points within the process system as needed. For example we may recognise that there are 3000 offences awaiting verification so we can allocate more resources to this as required.”
Prior to using the StarTraq system, Thames Valley used the national fixed penalty system which requires manual input which proved inefficient in terms of time.
In addition to the StarVision and StarDocs offence management systems, Thames Valley also benefits from StarSAS which its third party operator Drive-Tech uses. Drive Tech are employed to manage speed awareness course booking for eligible offenders and StarSAS provides the perfect solution.
Bryan concludes: “StarTraq provides an excellent product range but perhaps more importantly, they are willing to tailor their solutions to meet our needs. We continually work with the StarTraq team to develop the software both for our own requirements, and those which we think would benefit the systems as a whole.”
