UNPAID magistrates' court fines in Swindon totalled almost £573,000 last year.

However, court officials do not believe that the introduction of on-the-spot fines by the end of the year will make a difference to the figure.

The new fines of £40 and £80 for anti-social behaviour such as graffiti-writing and railway trespass were announced last week by Home Secretary David Blunkett, who claimed they would be a major deterrent to such offenders.

Critics, including some members of the Swindon public, said the measure would simply add to the burden of unpaid fines.

But Jane Daniels, the county accounts manager at Swindon Magistrates' Court, disagrees.

She said: "In theory, it should make no difference to the figures because the fines will be paid either on the spot or within a 21 day time limit."

However, under the new laws, if a fine is not paid, the accused person will face further and separate action in the magistrates' court for that non-payment.

Ms Daniels added that Swindon's rates of payment and non-payment of fines were about average in comparison with the rest of the country.

Last year, the latest for which figures are available, Swindon Magistrates' Court had 13,246 outstanding fines on its books, totalling £3,087,106 and including multiple fines handed out to single individuals.

No figures for the numbers of individuals fined, or the offences for which the fines were imposed, are available.

The 13,246 included 6,349 imposed by the court last year, 1,003 transferred from other courts when the people paying them moved home, and the remainder brought forward from the previous year.

Some fines are paid in weekly instalments, while in other cases magistrates order that they be paid within a time limit, and in still others the person fined elects to pay the whole sum immediately.

By year's end, a total of £572,833 remained unpaid.

Ms Daniels stressed that this figure included not only failures to pay but also the cases of people paying multiple fines by instalments.

In such cases, the individual fines are cleared one by one, technically plunging the later ones into arrears.