THOUSANDS of motorists are escaping without being fined after they are caught by speed cameras on roads in the North-East.

Figures from the Department for Transport show a third of all drivers caught on camera in the Northumbria Police area avoid prosecution.

Almost every offender on the roads of Teesside is tracked down, but only one in five pays the £60 fine immediately.

The statistics are contained in the accounts of the 35 safety camera partnerships throughout the UK and show huge regional discrepancies.

Motoring groups last night called for greater consistency and an end to cameras, which they said were inadvertently encouraging an "untraceable motoring underclass".

It is thought number-plate cloning and some owners deliberately not updating registration details to avoid prosecution is leading to poor detection rates in some areas.

In Manchester and London, only half the drivers flashed by cameras are found by officials and given fines and penalty points on their licences.

The figures show 27,300 offences were recorded in Cleveland and 26,980 tickets were issued, while in Northumbria, 128,269 offences were recorded and 75,999 tickets were issued.

However, Northumbria disputes the number of offences recorded. There were no figures for County Dur-ham or North Yorkshire.

Pressure group Brake, which backs the use of cameras, called for an investigation into the discrepancies between detection and enforce- ment.

A spokeswoman said: "People who speed need to know that there is a reasonable chance they can be caught, and if they are caught, they are going to be prosecuted."

Mick Bennett, of the Cleveland Safety Camera Partnership, said: "This is morally wrong because everyone is committing the same offence and should be dealt with in the same way.

"If we are chasing them all in Cleveland, then they should all be chased throughout the country.

"If 85 per cent of people are willing to pay, then the other 15 per cent should not be allowed to get away with it."

Ray King, of the Northumbria Safety Camera Partnership, which covers Tyneside, Wearside and Northumberland, said there were 78,500 vehicles -and not 128,269 vehicles -filmed and almost 76,000 fines paid during the 2004-05 financial year, and said the partnership had been dogged in tracing drivers.

He said the drivers they had been unable to trace or receive fines from included those with foreign vehicles and those who opted to dispute the conviction in court.