Archived decisions

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, and the proposed shape of the Second Local Transport Plan (LTP) supported programmes commencing in 2006/07. It also appraises Members of the conclusion of negotiations with Government over a Second Round Local Public Service Agreement (LPSA) target for road casualties on Hampshire's roads and the implications for the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Safety Camera Partnership arising from the Government's pre-Christmas announcement over future changes to Safety Camera Partnerships' funding and governance arrangements.

2. Casualty Reduction (Engineering) Programme

2.1 As reported to this Panel in 2005, the County Council had budgeted a sum of some £3 million of the LTP integrated transport settlement towards casualty reduction highway engineering measures in the current financial year. Due to both the progress that has been made with the implementation of this wide ranging programme of measures and additional pressures on the budget for Casualty Reduction Partnership investigations with Hampshire Constabulary, the Executive Member for Environment: South Hampshire and Resource Management approved a late supplementary allocation to the current year's programme of some £300,000 in January 2006.

2.2 Of this year's programme, some £1 million was 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 approaching completion county-wide has treated some 65 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. Appendix 1, Table 1 shows the list of schemes currently featuring in that programme for the Basingstoke and Deane area, together with the current implementation or study position for each scheme.

2.3 As reported to Members in autumn 2005, the overall programme initially provided some £250,000 to support the implementation of measures to treat sites identified through the County Council's Casualty Reduction Partnership investigations with Hampshire Constabulary, primarily focussed on locations with recent high severity injury collisions, often with fatalities. Some 82 investigations have been undertaken so far in this financial year, leading to the programmed installation of some 25 schemes. The budgetary pressure placed on the programme through the year resulted in an additional £100,000 allocation being made to support the ongoing programme of investigations and, where appropriate resulting measures.

2.4 The additionally agreed programme funding also enabled further support of £150,000 for the delivery of casualty history-led surface treatment works previously valued at £1,380,000. The schemes implemented in the Basingstoke and Deane area in this category are shown in Appendix 1, Table 2.

2.5 With the imminent submission of the County Council's second LTP for 2006-11 to Government (by the end of March 2006), the proposed funding for the casualty reduction engineering programme over the five years of the Plan has been set at £13.53 million. This will enable programmes of work to continue at broadly the same level of annual funding as achieved in the latter years of the first LTP.

3. Second Round Local Public Service Agreement with Government

3.1 As Members may be aware from previous Panel meetings, 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 second Hampshire LTP (2006-11). The headline targets, including locally more stretching targets to 2010 for all killed and serious injuries and killed and serious child injuries, are shown in Appendix 2. These supplement the national casualty reduction targets set by Government with the national road safety strategy in 2000, reported to Members at previous meetings. The Second LTP targets for the achievement of further casualty reductions on Hampshire's roads (including local motorway and trunk roads) are in summary:

(i) a 40% reduction in all killed 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 by the same date; and

(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.

3.2 Additionally, as Members may be aware, the County Council has been in negotiations with the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Department for Transport over the setting of a Second Round LPSA stretching target for road casualties, beyond that contained in the Second LTP. This target is one of a basket of stretching targets for improvements in public services performance, to which all Hampshire District Councils and a number of other major public service providers in Hampshire are formal partners. Those negotiations were successfully concluded in December 2005 and formal signature of the Agreement with Government is expected to have taken place prior to this Panel meeting. The principle of the stretching target for road casualties is to achieve a stabilisation of fatal and serious road casualties on Hampshire's roads through to 2009 (the conclusion year for LPSA2), which would produce a significant saving to the Hampshire community over the period, again as reported to the last meeting of this Panel. The Government has accepted that this is a sufficiently stretching target objective, given the considerable reductions achieved to 2004, which were among the largest recorded in any Police Force area between 2003 and 2004.

3.3 It should be noted that three awards for road safety achievements have recently been received:

(i) The County Council, jointly with Hampshire Constabulary, was awarded a Commendation in the Prince Michael of Kent Road Safety Awards for 2005 for its partnership working in reducing motorcycle casualties on Hampshire's roads.

(ii) The County Council's Road Safety Team and GCap radio have been recognised by an award for their creative excellence in UK radio production for an advertisement on drug testing aimed at young drivers. The advertisement was created in response to growing concerns amongst road safety professionals about the effects that driving under the influence of drugs has on the ability to drive safely. The advertisement targets young drivers, raising awareness about the consequences of taking drugs and driving and how it is as unacceptable as drink driving. The campaign, which ran over a month, managed to reach 65% of 15-25 year olds who listen to Capital Radio in Hampshire.

(iii) The County Council and Hampshire Constabulary have been awarded the "Prime Community Safety Award" for 2006. This award is given to partnerships demonstrating excellence in problem solving, in this case targeting the powered two wheeler casualties in Hampshire as part of the casualty reduction programme. The measures cited were:

(a) the Edge 44 rider assessment programme managed by the Road Safety Team, with extensive publicity campaigns through radio advertising and local publicity;

(b) the engineering measures introduced by the Safety Engineering Team on the main routes for powered two wheeler casualties in the county, A339, A272 and A32; and

(c) targeted enforcement by Hampshire Constabulary on these high risk routes.

4. Hampshire Safety Camera Partnership

4.1 Copies of the Safety Camera Partnership's recently published Annual Review for 2004/05 will be distributed at the meeting. This details the Partnership's activities and how these have delivered significant savings in road casualties and better management of traffic speeds at the carefully chosen network of camera enforcement locations (both fixed and mobile). The Review also summarises the funding arrangements for the Partnership, further details for which can be found by visiting the Partnership's website at www.safetycamera.org.uk, together with the Hampshire community's views on the effectiveness and need for safety camera operations. Notably, some 81% of the sample of the Hampshire public interviewed for the survey agreed that safety cameras should be supported as a means of reducing road casualties.

4.2 As reported to the autumn meeting, with provisional performance results for Hampshire, there have been marked casualty reductions effected on safety camera routes and sites 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 60% against benchmark levels prior to camera presence, representing a significant 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 nearly 44% against pre-enforcement levels.

4.3 In December 2005 the Government announced significant changes to safety camera funding and governance arrangements, which will take place from the 2007/08 financial year. This announcement was made at the same time that the Government published the findings of its independently commissioned four-year evaluation report into the effectiveness of the national safety camera programme. This confirmed the undoubted effectiveness of the programme in reducing vehicle speeds, accidents and casualties at UK camera sites.

4.4 The changes to governance arrangements will result in all Safety Camera Partnerships ceasing to operate in their existing form at the end of March 2007. The Government's intention is to absorb safety camera activities into wider programmes of casualty reduction action, principally based on existing Safety Camera Partnerships' operational areas. With these changes, future funding for those road safety programmes will be in the form of supplementary road safety funding to local Highway Authorities from Government through the LTP funding process. The direct link with safety camera operation fine revenue, known commonly as the cost recovery system, will cease to operate. The Government proposes to increase the total national funding available to local road safety partnerships from the levels currently available through safety camera cost recovery.

4.5 The four local Highway Authorities in the Hampshire Constabulary area have therefore been asked to indicate to Government in their LTP submissions how they intend to reflect these changed arrangements through their LTP2 road safety strategies. As the Safety Camera Partnership for the Hampshire Constabulary area already sits within a wider Strategic Casualty Reduction Partnership for Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, it is through this Strategic Partnership that the key public bodies affected by these changes are assessing the implications of these new arrangements. The Strategic Partnership already has representation beyond the regular Safety Camera Partnership members, principally by the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue and Ambulance Services and the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Strategic Health Authority. The Partners are in a good position, therefore, to respond positively to the Government's proposed changes and to fully accommodate ongoing safety camera activities within those wider casualty reduction arrangements.

5. Impact Assessments

5.1 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.

853/TLC