Contact: Tim Cheesebrough, ext 7114 email: [email protected]

1. Summary

1.1 This report outlines progress on the Hampshire County Council and Hampshire and Isle of Wight Safety Camera Partnership casualty reduction programmes for 2005-06, together with road casualty reduction progress in Hampshire against the Government's targets.

2. Casualty Reduction (Engineering) Programme

2.1 As reported to this Panel in the spring of 2005, the County Council has budgeted a sum of some £3 million of the Local Transport Plan integrated transport settlement towards casualty reduction highway engineering measures in the current financial year.

2.2 With the submission of the County Council's provisional second Local Transport Plan for 2006-11 to Government in July 2005, it is the intention (subject to confirmation of Government funding levels for LTP2) to continue this broad level of annual funding for the casualty reduction engineering programme, at least for the early years of that plan.

2.3 Of this year's programme, some £1 million is being made available to support the long established broadly low cost/high yield casualty reduction engineering programme, which remains the core of the County Council's engineering led casualty reduction programmes. The programme currently being implemented is expected to treat some 84 locations throughout the county with a higher than expected rate of casualties and/or with a predominant pattern of personal injury crashes thought likely to be treatable with engineering remedial measures. The attached appendix shows the list of schemes currently featuring in that programme for the Winchester area, together with the current implementation or study position for each scheme.

2.4 In addition to the low cost/high yield sub-programme, the overall programme is providing £250,000 to support the implementation of measures to treat sites identified through the County Council's Casualty Reduction Partnership investigations with Hampshire Constabulary. As reported to previous Panel meetings, such investigations (which commenced in 2003) are directed towards locations where there have recently been high severity injury collisions, often involving fatalities. The treatments typically installed are often similar to the low cost engineering programme and include measures such as improved signing, carriageway markings, carriageway surface retexturing or resurfacing. To date, some 29 investigations have been undertaken in this financial year, leading to the programmed installation of some 12 schemes. The available funding will enable such investigations and the programming of resultant measures to continue throughout the year.

2.5 In addition, the programme funding is enabling increased support of £1,380,000 for casualty history led surface treatment works to be undertaken across the county on roads and routes with a higher than expected occurrence of loss of control incidents. The schemes proposed for the Winchester area are also shown in the appendix.

2.6 A further allocation within the 2005-06 programme is enabling the County Council to continue to audit the ongoing effectiveness of previously installed casualty reduction engineering schemes, where there is the potential to either achieve further casualty savings or where there has been a recent increase in casualty occurrence. Some £200,000 is being made available to support this work. The remainder of the £3 million programme will enable more significant safety works to be implemented at two locations with stubborn crash histories: Water Lane, Totton (New Forest District) and Tukes Avenue, Gosport.

3. Casualty Reduction Progress

3.1 As Members will be aware, it is the County Council's continued intention to contribute to the Government's headline national casualty reduction targets to the year 2010, through the Hampshire Road Safety Strategy, as contained in the Hampshire Local Transport Plan (2001-06). The headline targets have now been reviewed for the aforementioned provisional second Hampshire Local Transport Plan (2006-11), and are now as follows:

(i) A 40% reduction in all fatalities and serious injuries from the average baseline level for the years 1994-98, together with a further 30% reduction on the average levels for the years 2000-04. As provisionally reported to members at the spring meeting the final figure for 2004 of 669 fatalities and serious injuries, represented a 37% reduction on the 1994-98 baseline. This figure was considerably ahead of the milestone target to meet the 2010 figure, with the lowest recorded fatal and serious casualty toll on Hampshire's roads (including local motorway and trunk roads) to date.

(ii) A 50% reduction in fatal and serious child casualties between the 1994-98 baseline and 2010, together with a further 35% reduction by 2010 from a new 2000-04 baseline. Again, as reported to Members at the spring Panel, the provisional figure for Hampshire for 2004 was 67 fatal and serious child casualties, only marginally higher than the 2003 result and representing the second lowest toll for Hampshire's roads to date. This reduction by 2004 represented a 39% reduction on the baseline and was also considerably ahead of the milestone target to 2010.

3.2 Additionally, as the Panel are aware, the County Council through its locally negotiated Public Service Agreement with Government, committed itself to achieving a more demanding local reduction in all fatal and serious casualties on Hampshire's roads, of 26% by the end of 2004 from the 1994-98 baseline position. This very challenging target was met by some margin and the County Council has recently made an application to the Office of Deputy Prime Minister for additional performance reward grant to the authority as a result of meeting that Agreement. This reward grant is expected to be received over the 2006-07 and 2007-08 financial years.

3.4 The County Council will this autumn commence negotiations over a second Local Public Service Agreement with Government. Within a broad suite of stretch performance targets focussed upon community safety, the County Council in partnership with both Hampshire District Councils and the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Strategic Casualty Reduction Partnership (including notably Hampshire Constabulary, Hampshire and Isle of Wight Strategic Health Authority, Hampshire Ambulance and the Fire and Rescue Service, together with the Highways Agency) is again proposing a stretching target for road casualty reduction. Although subject to agreement at the time of writing, the initial proposal to Government is to locally achieve stability in the 2004 Hampshire casualty reduction results and to broadly maintain this performance consistently throughout the period to 2008, when the Agreement would conclude. The value of stabilising these results to the Hampshire community is expected to exceed £40 million, as based upon the Government's own valuations of road casualties to the UK community.

4. Hampshire Safety Camera Partnership

4.1 To be distributed at the meeting will be copies of the Safety Camera Partnership's recently published public information leaflet, detailing the Partnership's activities. This highlights the marked casualty reductions effected on safety camera routes and sites in the operational year 2003-04 across the Safety Camera Partnership area, including the cities of Portsmouth and Southampton, the Isle of Wight and the local trunk road network. On average, the number of fatal and serious collisions has decreased by 59 percent against benchmark levels prior to camera presence, representing a huge saving in both financial costs and personal loss to the communities of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. All injury accidents were also reduced by 35 percent against pre-enforcement levels.

4.2 This enforcement presence on high casualty routes and sites over this period is believed to have contributed substantially to the local highways authorities' casualty reduction performance results of late. For the Hampshire County Council operational area it has clearly made a marked contribution to the authority having met its local Public Service Agreement stretched target with Government. At the time of writing the Government is however yet to approve the additional small number of additional fixed and mobile safety camera sites requested for approval in the Partnership area for 2005-06. This is a similar position for all Partnerships across the country. It is expected this approval will be gained shortly however, when the Partnership will mobilise to ensure those new locations are operational by early in 2006.

Impact Assessments

Assessment of the Race Relations (Amendment) Act has been considered in the development of this programme, which is not expected to compromise equalities in terms of race and gender, but to improve road user safety for all.

Recommendation

That this report be noted.

532/TLC