Nearly a quarter of a million foreign drivers have evaded the Dartford Crossing automated toll in first four months since booths were scrapped
- Traditional cash toll-booths were scrapped in November last year
- Now around 1,900 foreign drivers a day are failing to pay the £2.50 toll
- Highways England has no powers to force foreign drivers to pay
- British car drivers who fail to pay the toll face fines of up to £105
Nearly a quarter of a million foreign drivers using the M25 Dartford Crossing have evaded the controversial new automated toll – while UK drivers who do the same face hefty fines through the post, new figures reveal.
The 227,805 foreign vehicles which failed to pay during the new toll system’s first four months of operation – at the rate of nearly 2,000 per day - account for a quarter of all foreign cars and lorries going through the two Dartford Tunnels or across the Queen Elizabeth Bridge since the new free-flow Dart charge came into operation on November 30.
The figures show that almost as many foreign drivers are evading the toll as British drivers are being chased and fined for doing the same since the traditional cash toll-booths and traditional barriers were scrapped.
Toll dodgers: 227,805 foreign vehicles have failed to pay during the Dartford Crossing toll system’s first four months of operation
British car drivers who fail to sign up to pay the automated £2.50 toll face fines of up to £105. But foreign drivers are so far getting away scot free.
Now drivers must register their vehicles online, by telephone or post - in the same way they pay for the London Congestion charge– with 18 number-plate recognition cameras policing the free-flow system and sending out penalty charge notices to UK drivers.
The statistics emerged from a Freedom of Information request to Highways England which oversees the new system on the M25.
They show that a total of 864,438 vehicles using the crossing were of foreign origin. The 227,805 non-payers represent more than a quarter (26 per cent) of the total foreign vehicles, of which a quarter were lorries.
Overall just under 14 million vehicles (13,993,470) have used the crossing during the chargeable hours of the automated toll in the period since it opened on November 30 last year to March 31 this year.
The traditional toll booths were scrapped in November last year
Of these, 357,162 have been fined for non-payment – 2.5 per cent of the total. Some 12.8million did pay (12,836,511).
Highways England insisted that no foreign fines have been ‘written off.’ However it has no powers to force foreign drivers to pay.
It noted that the 26 per cent of foreign vehicles that failed to pay the charge represented ‘less than two per cent of the total vehicle passages during this period.’
Analysis of postcodes show that travellers from as far afield as Lands End to John O’Groats use the M25 crossing.
Professor Stephen Glaister, director of the RAC Foundation, said: ‘The price of removing the toll barriers and cutting congestion was always going to include people avoiding the charge.
‘But was anyone expecting 1,900 foreign vehicles a day to evade payment? The numbers beg the question whether visiting drivers disembarking at the Channel ports are getting enough information on how to pay the charge.
‘It must be easier to improve signage than send debt collectors across the continent and beyond to chase non-payers when they are already back home.”
Professor Glaister said: ‘At one stage there was talk of making non-payers settle their debts at places like Dover before they were allowed to leave the country.
'After all, in places like France, errant motorists from abroad have to pay speeding fines on the spot.’
The M25’s Dartford crossing over the Thames is used by up to 50 million vehicles a year at a rate of up to 170,000 a day.
If a car driver fails in time to pay the new £2.50 toll – an 25 per cent increase on the earlier level of £2.00– he or she will be fined automatically up to £105.
Failure to pay online or by phone by midnight of the following day will, when ‘free-flow’ goes live, result in a penalty charge of £35 if paid within 14 days, £70 up to 28 days and £105 thereafter.
Highways England insisted it was seeking to pursue foreign non-payers of the toll by instructing debt-collecting agencies on the Continent to retrieve where possible the unpaid charges, even though these are civil and not criminal cases and therefore exceptionally and expensive to follow up.
Nigel Gray, Dart Charge project director insisted: ‘It is simply not true that foreign drivers are getting off scot free. We have enforcement arrangements across Europe, and have already passed nearly 60,000 cases to our European debt recovery agent for collection.‘
He added: ’What these figures show is that the vast majority of drivers are paying their Dart Charge, and that non-payment is being followed up appropriately.
‘We understand that Dart Charge is a significant change, and we are working hard to strike the right balance between being absolutely clear that drivers need to pay the charge while giving people the maximum opportunity to avoid a penalty.’
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