Police warn of a new 'seize first' approach to the illegal use of e-scooters

People in High Peak using e-scooters have been warned police are getting tough on their illegal use and are operating a 'seize first' approach.

Derbyshire police is taking action after it received hundreds of reports involving the “terrifying” vehicles.

The force is now seizing e-scooters “immediately” off the streets if they are seen by officers in public places. This new approach from Derbyshire police began from November 1.

On Monday, November 11 (more than a week into the new approach) police said it seized 10 vehicles. At the start of 2024 the force seized an average of 13 e-scooters per month.

New action comes after newly-elected Derbyshire Police and Crime Commissioner Nicolle Ndiweni-Roberts (Labour) said she had been working with Derbyshire police chiefs to make e-scooter enforcement “more robust”.

Statistics show that in the last two years 509 calls have been received by Derbyshire police relating to anti-social behaviour involving e-scooters and 441 reports of them being ridden dangerously.

E-scooter safety campaigner Sarah Gayton has welcomed Derbyshire police’s new stance but has warned the force “not to take their foot off the pedal” in clamping down on riders and to publish data regularly to show if the new approach is working or not.

The use of an e-scooter on public roads is illegal – with no insurance or licence covering the riding of the devices – unless they are hired as part of a government approved scheme.

Derbyshire police say the collapse of Derby City Council’s e-scooter trial scheme at the start of this year, which made some e-scooters legal to ride, now means “that any e-scooter being ridden in the county (on public roads) is now being done so illegally”.

The use of e-scooters across Derbyshire has caused problems. In Derby there has been calls for the vehicles to be banned in the city centre, with one councillor saying nuisance problems with them are rife.

In 2023 another Derby councillor called for lane markings to be installed to give e-scooter riders their own space and protect pedestrians – this was when the city council’s e-scooter scheme was still in operation.  It has also been reported how police have previously warned people about the use of e-scooters following a number of serious accidents involving the vehicles across the county.

Before November police took an “educational approach” to e-scooter enforcement but following conversations with the new police and crime commissioner and the dissolution of the Derby trail scheme – a tougher stance is now being applied.

Superintendent James Thompson said: “The law is very clear when it comes to private e-scooters – they are illegal to ride in public. However, the force understood that there was the potential for confusion due to the trial scheme being run Derby.

“That is why we took the pragmatic approach of warning people that they were breaking the law by riding an e-scooter in public. Since the trial scheme stopped earlier this year that confusion has now ended – and if you are riding an e-scooter in public then you are committing an offence.”

Sarah Gayton, from the UK’s National Federation of the Blind, hoped Derbyshire could “lead the way” in terms of a stronger e-scooter enforcement nationally to protect pedestrians and riders themselves.

She said: “We have to be mindful that police officers could sometimes pass riders but are attending another job or are responding to something else. But this new policy is totally welcomed and we hope other police forces will be inspired to take this action.

“E-scooter riders are terrifying pedestrians. There are still a lot of hidden dangers of people getting hurt and them not being reported. I think the force has to publish the data of how many they have taken off the streets.”