Concern about potential dangers on the road is probably one of the more frequent topics that residents contact their ward councillor about - even on a district council where road safety is primarily the county council's responsibility. Councillors will want to work for the residents of the ward they represent, while also supporting the best road safety package for the council's whole area.
Councillors need to reconcile these different roles - and the material on these webpages can help.
Changing lanes says that: "The biggest challenges in reducing road accidents are around changing road users' attitudes and behaviour. Engineering improvements continue to make the road infrastructure safer. But accidents will still happen as long as road users take risks (deliberately or simply thoughtlessly) or fail to concentrate."
Themes
This website aims to provide elected members with material to help them with their role.
- How can councillors deal with requests that aren't high on officers' lists of priorities?
- How to persuade residents to look again at their own behaviour as road users?
Partly it is about the corporate role of members in contributing to the corporate governance of the council:
- Is the council getting the best use of the available money?
- How to encourage joint working between the council and other agencies?
Relating to communities
People aren't consistent. Most of us would like to live in areas with quiet streets that feel safe, and to feel the same about local schools or shops. But many road users aren't aware of, or don't think about, the impact of their own driving, riding or walking. In the long term, councils need to persuade people to behave better as road users, as well as try to meet their demands for local road improvements.
Road safety often comes up as part of a package of issues. Anti-social driving and bike riding comes up under community safety. Speeding features alongside traffic noise and pollution when people think about quality of life. Taking a child to school for the first time may be when people consider safety issues on the route. Some of the case studies in our report highlight cases where road safety has been addressed along with a package of other problems.
Elected members have an important role in spreading the road safety message to their constituents but also in making officers aware of their constituent's road safety needs. It is important that elected members act as a conduit for this two-way process.
The following questions should help you reflect upon how road safety can be improved in your council. They accompany the Audit Commission's road safety report Changing lanes.
- Are members kept up to date on key road safety issues? Do you receive timely information from officers on road safety to allow you to respond to concerns raised by the public? Does this allow you to be proactive in influencing road users' behaviour?
- How does the council engage with groups often excluded from conventional council engagement? For instance, children in deprived communities are often at higher accident risk. Engagement may, for example, involve direct initiatives with community centres or publicity through other council events such as street festivals.
- Have you identified special interest groups to consult on specific road safety issues, for example, through road user forums? Can you identify positive outcomes from past consultation with these groups?
- Road safety initiatives are often most effective when linked to issues such as sustainable travel and community safety. How do you make the links across these issues when communicating with the public?
- The bulk of spending on road safety should be prioritised on the basis of casualty data. But communities may want work done in locations with no record of accidents. In these cases, are funds available for low-cost approaches to reduce the risk?
- How does the council promote road safety? Is it making best use of the facilities and opportunities available, such as using reception and waiting areas, and promotional events?
- Can you encourage local media to cover any positive community involvement with road safety issues/schemes?
Corporate role
Road safety tends not to divide the political parties. But when the scientific evidence is unclear, political process is needed to decide on priorities. Elected members can help ensure that a local road safety strategy makes an effective contribution to meeting casualty reduction targets. As a representative of the community, councillors can inform the decision-making processes working through a cabinet or committee structure. Elected members are often faced with making tough decisions about allocating finite resources between competing priorities; this may affect the resources available for road safety activity.
The interaction between human factors and road features has important implications for safety engineering and road user education, and highlights the need for engineers, road safety officers, police and other public sector workers to work closely together. Some members also sit on other bodies such as the crime and disorder reduction partnership, police or health authorities and can raise the profile of road safety on the agendas of these organisations. Elected members have the opportunity to adopt a place shaping role, taking the lead in order to enhance this partnership and to become actively involved in making local roads safer.
The following questions should help you reflect upon how road safety can be improved in your council. They accompany the Audit Commission's road safety report Changing lanes.
- What is the profile of road safety in your council? Is road casualty reduction a stated priority?
- Do you have a strategy for improving road safety? Councils are required to report regularly to the Department for Transport on road safety within the local transport plan priorities: do these reports demonstrate that good progress is being made?
- Is there a member champion for road safety? If so, does he/she have sufficient authority to make things happen?
- Does road safety adversely affect other organisational objectives, for example do concerns about safety deter cycling growth? Are members satisfied that road safety issues are given proper attention in development control decisions?
- As an employer, what is the council's approach to work-related road safety?
Joint working
- Are you making links with other organisations that have an interest in reducing road casualties? Could you do more and, if so, how?
Value for money
- Consider the chart on page 30 of Changing Lanes. For your council, is spending on road safety reasonable in proportion to the scale of the problems? Is the split between engineering and education, training and publicity (ETP) logical? How does spending compare with other councils?
- Is spending targeted on priority locations and groups of road users identified by road safety data? To what extent does this apply to engineering? What about ETP?