End of the road for driver finally caught in Kettering TEN YEARS after having his licence taken away

A BMW driver was finally left to walk home after police discovered he had spent TEN YEARS behind the wheel with no licence.

Officers from Northamptonshire Police Road Crime Team were initially alerted to the vehicle being uninsured.

And the driver's plea that he was covered fell on deaf ears after he showed them an email with the subject line: "We have cancelled your policy."

Further enquiries revealed the uninsured driver also had his licence revoked ten years ago.

The vehicle was seized and the driver reported following the stop in Berwick Road, Kettering, at 1.30am on Friday (December 3).

Automatic Number Plate Cameras, which are spread around the county's roads and mounted on police vehicles, gave the initial call about the suspect vehicle.

The ANPR network reads registration numbers of passing vehicles and instantly checks database records to confirm if the registered keeper has a licence, road tax, MoT and insurance.

ANPR has proved to be important in the detection of many offences, including locating, for example, people wanted for arrest or missing, witnesses, stolen vehicles, uninsured vehicles and uncovering cases of major crime.

Earlier this year, Chief Constable Nick Adderley described the network as a 'ring of steel' around the county after revealing it had resulted in 340 arrests in its first eight months.

A £1.3m investment providing 150 cameras also saw 627 vehicle seizures, 310 intelligence-led searches, and 1,026 traffic offences identified between January and August this year.

Mr Adderley said: “These cameras and the team which sits behind them have proven their worth several times over.

“Without their capability, many of the arrests we have made here simply would not have happened and others would have taken hours and hours of time and resource, not to mention lengthy and anxious waits for the victims.

“Increasing our ANPR capability has not only enabled us to put a ring of steel around the county to prevent and detect crime, but it also enables us to better protect vulnerable people."