POLICE last night insisted motorists on Oxfordshire’s roads will be prosecuted and protected as rigorously as ever despite plans to turn off speed cameras next week.

The future of drink driving, mobile phone and seatbelt spot checks in the county were plunged into doubt on Thursday after Oxfordshire County Council slashed its funding for the Thames Valley Safer Roads Partnership.

Thames Valley Police has ruled out stumping up the six figure sum needed to prevent a switch-off of Oxfordshire’s 72 fixed speed cameras and seven ‘red light’ cameras on August 1.

However, police chiefs insisted 64 dedicated road policing officers in Oxfordshire will continue to work alongside neighbourhood officers in the county to carry out road safety checks and patrols.

The assurances came as parents expressed their shock that the camera next to the park in Abingdon Road would be switched off.

Lynne Wade, 53, from Iffley takes her two grandchildren Thomas, three, and Amelia, two, to the park twice a week. She said: “It’s shocking. I would feel less safe bringing my grand-children with the camera turned off.”

Jenny Carter, 44, a mum-of-one from Howard Street, said: “It is a terrible idea. I saw a little girl run out of the park the other day and her mum just caught her before she hit the road. As a driver seeing a speed camera slows me down.”

Tracy Floyd, 35, a mum-of-one from Abingdon, said: “It would make me think about not coming to this park.”

Statistics from the partnership showed over the last five years speed related collisions resulted in 195 deaths in Oxfordshire – 15.4 per cent of all fatalities on the roads.

Speed was also the contributory factor in 201 accidents leading to serious injury and 1,046 accidents resulting in slight injuries.

In 2009, police and the partnership carried out 424 hours of speed checks which resulted in 2,866 drivers caught for speeding.

A further 1,010 drivers were caught using mobile phones and 4,050 drivers not wearing seatbelts.

Roads in Berkshire and Buckinghamshire will continue to get these checks and speed cameras as their councils have continued to fund the partnership with £1.4m.

Ch Insp Gill Wootton, head of roads policing in the Thames Valley, said police were still in discussions about how to replace these spotchecks in Oxfordshire.

She insisted many dozens more spotchecks were carried out by officers hitting drivers with 3,396 fixed penalty notices for speeding; 2,129 for mobile phone use and 3,677 for seatbelt offences between July 2009 and June 2010.

She said: “Our policing priorities have not changed. We want to protect all the communities of the Thames Valley and make sure they use roads that are as safe as we can make them.”