Drivers tempted to roar past Warwickshire's community speedwatch volunteers have been warned of surprises that may lurk behind the hi-vis jackets. 

Inspector Jem Mountford this week revealed a tactic being deployed by Warwickshire Police in a bid to quell persistent offenders – hiding police officers among camera operators. 

The speedwatch scheme is run by volunteers to help slow down traffic in areas of concern.

Details of speeding vehicles are taken with the police writing to the registered keeper but formal action cannot be taken unless a police officer catches the driver in the act.

This knowledge can sometimes encourage undesirable behaviour, something Inspector Mountford, a former traffic cop who now works on South Warwickshire's Safer Neighbourhoods Team (SNT), said that police officers are working on finding a way around. 

"If the central reporting system identifies a location coming up over and over again, very often that will get sent to my team and I will direct them to do some enforcement activity," he told Warwick District Council's overview & scrutiny committee.

"We are backed up by a massive network of community safety teams that do their own speed awareness stuff, members of the public that are trained to use the kit. 

"That is not enforceable but it does allow us to send letters. If we have an area of particular concern, a tactic is to place a police officer in the middle of those members of the public.

"Suddenly it is then enforceable and people that might have been over-exuberant on many occasions will get pulled up and get a ticket."

It was part of his answer to a query raised by Cllr Josh Payne on why speeding was not listed as a priority of South Warwickshire's SNT, which covers the districts of Warwick and Stratford-on-Avon, and why its annual report did not refer to data on speeding.

"Certainly in my ward, and no doubt in other parts of the district, speeding is one of the top three concerns residents and parishes have," said Cllr Payne.

"If not in the top three, it is always in the top five."

Inspector Mountford said such issues were generally the domain of the road safety partnership but that there was some crossover, highlighting how complaints are dealt with by Warwickshire Police's centralised system, helping to collate evidence to target problem areas.

However, he also said that the evidence does not always back up the claims.

"You are absolutely right, I appreciate it comes up time and time again, speeding is one of the main issues," said Inspector Mountford. 

"What I would say from many years of experience is that very often the perception of speed is slightly different from reality. We do a lot of surveys and it is rare that the perception fits what is actually happening.

"It is a strange thing but the sound of vehicles can make people think they are going very fast when they are not. There is quite a structure there to deal with it.

"As with everything we do, because of finite resources we have to be data driven. That is why we do the road surveys if we get a repeat location, it is to see exactly that, whether the perception is the reality. 

"If it is, we have a number of things that we put in place to counter that – it might be camera vans, or road policing officers because they can go to more locations than the camera vans. 

"Over the past couple of years we have invested in an unmarked police (motor) bike that has a full camera system on it. That has been really successful, particularly against motorcyclists.

"I appreciate that a lot of this perception is around noise. That is another thing that comes up a lot, motorcycles and noisy exhausts, where we do what we can, again data driven."