PEOPLE across Hampshire are paying an average of £1.61 each in speed camera fines.

During the financial year from 2005 to 2006 a total of 60,697 fixed penalty notices were issued, of which 80 per cent were paid, according to figures released by the Department for Transport.

Speeding motorists stumped up £2.9m after being caught out by the county's 31 fixed cameras and 37 mobile ones.

The year before - 2004 to 2005 - speeding motorists paid out £3.1m in fines.

It means that more fixed penalty notices ordering the £60 fine are being paid although some motorists, especially those with foreign or cloned number plates are escaping payment as they are difficult to trace.

Julian Lewis, spokesman for the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Safety Camera Partnership, funded by the government, said: "We have no incentive to make money for the government. The last thing we want to do is to make money."

All of the fines go towards the government's 'consolidated fund' of which every year hundreds of thousands of pounds is siphoned off by The Treasury.