I confess to being slightly bemused by your two correspondents' views that the Cumbria Safety Camera partnership makes money from people speeding (Letters, March 11, Speeding generates money').

When I looked at the bottom line for the first year of operation I saw that we made no profit whatsoever. The four partners can only reclaim their operational investment and that is our only financial responsibility; any excess is retained by the Treasury, but that is a totally different matter from the safety camera project making a profit and this should be taken up with the Government.

As the name implies, the camera project is about safety. In 2004 there was a 71 per cent reduction in the number of people killed and seriously injured at the 47 hotspots monitored by the safety camera vans.

We are aware of problems elsewhere and we are working closely with other organisations under the Safer Roads For Cumbria umbrella to reduce the number of people killed and seriously injured on the county's roads.

No-one has ever suggested that safety cameras are the sole answer to solving the unacceptably high number of fatalities and, given the tiny percentage of the county's road networks that we monitor, it would be impossible to achieve this.

However, working with other agencies we are starting to have a positive effect on road safety in Cumbria as a whole and this should be applauded, not criticised.

Kevin Tea Communcations manager Cumbria Safety Cameras