CARS owned by road tax dodgers in Dewsbury are facing the crusher.

More than 100 will be crushed into cubes after a successful operation to clamp down on untaxed vehicles in the district.

Police and traffic wardens have been targeting locations in the Dewsbury area in a joint operation with the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency and the Vehicle Inspectorate.

The purge ran for four days and 104 unlicensed cars were found.

The DVLA used Stingray cameras, which can detect unlicensed vehicles on the move, to detect tax dodgers.

The automatic number plate reader collects images of moving vehicles from digital cameras and checks them against a database of unlicensed vehicles.

A total of 8,891 vehicles were checked.

During the crackdown, traffic wardens also issued 27 fixed-penalty tickets to people caught not wearing seatbelts and those with defective number plates.

One man was arrested for driving while disqualified and 66 vehicles were clamped.

Seventeen people were reported for offences such as having no insurance, driving licence or test certificate, while 128 people were reported for excise offences such as not having any tax or having tax which had expired.

Police also stopped vehicles for random safety checks. Nineteen received prohibition notices, meaning either that they could not proceed any further because the defects were so serious, or that they had a set time to solve the problem.

"Some of the vehicles we found were in a state of ill repair," said Sgt Alan Kaye who heads Dewsbury Division's Road Traffic Department.

"We worked with Kirklees Council and the DVLA to tidy up the streets for local communities by removing unlicensed and abandoned vehicles.

"As well as being unsightly, vehicles like these are a hazard to other road users and are also frequent targets for arson.

"From information received from local communities we built up a picture of where these cars were so that we could do something about it. The operation was very successful, which is why we are running similar ones again.

"Unlicensed vehicles are often used by criminals as `pool' cars to commit crime.

"Removing these cars from the streets takes away the opportunity for thieves and therefore helps to reduce levels of burglary, drug dealing and vehicle crime," added Sgt Kaye.

Related stories and messageboards