Petition - Make real improvements to Road Safety on Cove Road, Farnborough

I refer to your letter and petition to Leo Docherty MP dated 2 October.

When safety concerns are initially reported to us our Safety Engineering team will firstly try to identify if there have been other collisions or incidents at a particular site that might indicate an emerging highway safety problem. We routinely examine the police database of recorded injury collisions as this provides an accurate record of incidents attended by the police as well as being a source of valuable additional contextual information regarding the factors identified as contributing to incidents. With this background information we can then consider the most appropriate measures to tackle the specific problems. We do also consider other factors, such as local concerns and/or near misses that may be reported to us, and may also seek corroborating evidence, i.e. non-injury incident records for events attended by our highways maintenance contractor to clear debris or repair roadside assets such as signs or street lights.

The County Council has a clear policy of directing the limited resources that is has available for road safety measures to those locations with identifiable injury accident problems and the highest need. This is in line with our aim to reduce the number of people killed and seriously injured on Hampshire’s roads. In the five year period up to the end of June 2018 there has been one injury accident on the southern one-way section of Cove Road between its junctions with Bridge Road. This accident occurred in June 2015 and did not involve the problem highlighted by the petition. The most recent collision which occurred on Sunday 30th September has been checked with Hampshire Police colleagues and they have confirmed that this incident did not result in any injuries to those involved and is likely to be ultimately attributed to factors that could not have been resolved with the use of engineering or similar measures.

In light of this the County Council has no plans for any safety improvements at this location at the present time.

Yours sincerely

Cllr R Humby
Executive Member for Environment and Transport