The costs and benefits of Department for Transport's enforcement activities.

The UK Department for Transport (DfT) spends over £100m per year on enforcing a variety of laws concerning driver and vehicle licensing, operating standards, vehicle component and type approval and driving standards. The revenue raised from these activities, including such items as license feesand fines, exceeds £140m p.a. The social cost resulting from offences under these laws has been estimated to exceed £500m p.a., largely as a resultof accidents involving substandard vehicles or unqualified drivers. DfT'sDriver and Vehicle Operations (DVO) Group is responsible for the administration and enforcement of these laws and it recently commissioned Halcrow to undertake research into the costs and benefits of 21 of its main enforcement activities. The research was particularly focussed on examining how the application of rigorous economic principles could prioritise investment in these various enforcement activities. The ultimate aim was to developand test a methodology that would provide a firm basis for focussing the investment of enforcement resources in those activities which produced thehighest economic returns. An established economic framework is described which incorporates both the social cost of enforcement and that of the damage resulting from offences. As well as accident costs, sources of social damage could include increased vehicle emissions, delays (e.g. due to broken down vehicles) and the wider impacts of other criminal offences which those who break some traffic offences are more than three times as likely to have committed. The framework also includes a behavioural model for forecasting levels of offending, based on perceived levels of the certainty and severity of sanctions. The results of case studies involving all 21 of the enforcement activities were examined. In each case, the costs and benefits of existing levels of compliance were calculated along with the cost-effectiveness ratio of current enforcement activities. In those cases were sufficient data was available, models were developed which allowed the economic impact to be assessed of varying the level of enforcement. The resultant forecast change in the level of offending provided both the economic and financial rationale for either increasing or decreasing the level of enforcement in each particular area. One of the key implications from the research is that penalties for many of the offences studied are too low - well below the optimal level. Focussing enforcement resources on particularactivities and in some cases, increasing levels of enforcement, could bring about significant reductions in accidents as well as resulting in widersocial and economic benefits. Furthermore, increased levels of enforcement can be both more effective and more efficient in reducing accidents thaninvestment in expensive capital programmes. For the covering abstract seeITRD E145999