LLANELLI: MP calls for noise cameras at North Dock’s night-time ‘racetrack’

The MP wants cameras that catch cars by their noise: Llanelli’s Dame Nia Griffith is urging the council and police to install acoustic cameras at North Dock, where residents say the car park still turns into a racetrack after dark.

The cameras pair a microphone array with a traditional camera, photographing any vehicle that passes above a set decibel level, the way a speed camera catches speeding, and have been used elsewhere in the UK against nuisance driving, engine revving and illegally modified exhausts.

Her call, in response to complaints from residents living close to the car park, is for Carmarthenshire County Council and Dyfed-Powys Police to toughen enforcement in the area, with bollards in the car park and barriers to cut access at night.

“This behaviour in North Dock has been a big concern for several years and it is unfair to those residents nearby who are having to bear the brunt of it,” she said.

The MP has history with the technology. “Back in 2022 when acoustic cameras were first trialled in the UK, I campaigned for North Dock to be included in the pilot scheme as the issues we are seeing there today were exactly the same then,” she said.

Those pilots eventually went to Yorkshire, Bristol, Birmingham and Great Yarmouth, and Dame Nia said they showed the cameras could detect and prosecute nuisance drivers and deter the problems in the first place, which is why she says the force and council “now need to do all they can” to bring them to North Dock.

“There are other pro-active, common-sense things like introducing bollards into the car park to reduce the likelihood of it being used as a racetrack and installing barriers to reduce access at night times that can also be done too which would make a huge difference,” she said.

“This has dragged on for far too long. Residents and local businesses need to be listened to and firmer action taken to stop this problem once and for all.”

Nearly 40 enforcement actions in a day: what the police tried in spring

The call lands on a problem the police already know well. In April, Dyfed-Powys said it was stepping up patrols at North Dock for the spring and summer, describing the waterfront as an annual hotspot as the weather improves.

The complaints the force listed then match the ones reaching the MP now: reckless and dangerous driving, items thrown at other vehicles, excessively loud music and persistent horn beeping.

The scale of past enforcement shows what patrols alone have involved. In a single March 2025 operation, officers issued 18 vehicle prohibitions and 18 traffic offence reports, seized two vehicles and made two drug-driving arrests.

Inspector Thomas Coppock said in April the force wanted people to enjoy the area but was “ready to take robust action” against the minority spoiling it.

A protection order on the way, and what it would do

There is movement on one of her asks. Carmarthenshire Council is reported to be planning a public consultation next month on a vehicle-related public spaces protection order for the North Dock area, covering nuisance vehicle gatherings, racing, drifting and excessive noise.

A protection order would let the council make specific behaviours in a defined area enforceable offences, the same tool it already uses against street drinking in Llanelli town centre, where an order has been in force since January 2024.

The same report says police operations in recent months have seized vehicles for having no insurance and for careless or anti-social driving, with the force’s designing-out crime officer producing a detailed report for the council on the area.

Residents quoted in it describe years of broken sleep, with one likening nights at the dock to “Mad Max”.

Dame Nia’s intervention asks for something more permanent than a seasonal crackdown: infrastructure that works at 3am when the patrol car is elsewhere.

Whether acoustic cameras join the consultation’s shopping list now rests with the council and the force she has called on to act.