Lancashire Police have missed out on £641,000 of fines over the last five years, with much of the cash due to an EU loophole.

Figures released under the Freedom of Information Act show that over 10,000 fixed penalty notices have been cancelled because the force cannot get access to foreign vehicle registration details.

The total adds up to six cancelled tickets a day and takes into account fines cancelled since 2004.
However it does not include all penalty charge notices which were dodged by foreign motorists.

A police spokesman said: "This is a nationally recognised issue and plans are in place at national level for future enforcement techniques.
"However, at the moment there is an obvious difficulty in tackling this issue as we do not have access to foreign registration systems.

"In Lancashire, when we have a large influx in any one area of foreign motorists caught speeding, we are able to put markers on those vehicles so that our Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) teams are then able to stop the vehicles and obtain details from the driver."

The news comes just weeks after a Lancashire Police civilian was sacked for incorrectly calibrating two speed cameras - including on the A59 at Penwortham - meaning 545 motorists wrongly received speeding fines.