New roads policing centre helping to track down offenders faster and disrupt organised crime groups that rely on England's road network, cracking down on illegal number plates will target drivers who dodge fines and organised crime gangs as the Department for Transport (DfT) funds a new roads policing team.
The National Roads Policing Coordination Centre (NRPCC) will bring together police forces from around England to share intelligence, improve collaboration and make better use of data.
This includes trialling new technology, for example, specialised goggles that can detect number plates where criminals have tried to make them unreadable by cameras.
Illegal number plates can come in many forms, including:
- cloned plates, where a vehicle carries a copied registration belonging to another legitimate vehicle, making it harder to identify
- ‘ghost plates’, where a transparent film is used to make the registration undetectable to cameras
- missing plates, where a car has no number plate at all
Drivers using an incorrectly displayed number plate can be fined up to £1,000.