Final LTP March 2006

We have an excellent recent record in road safety, both in terms of  our rate of casualty reduction and rate of accidents compared with the other metropolitan areas.  Our designation as a Centre of Excellence, focusing on road safety, reflects this.  Casualty figures are shown in Table 2 ‘Road Safety Casualties’.

A continuation of the currently very successful programme of Local Safety Schemes will ensure these trends are maintained.  However, it must be acknowledged that, due to the random nature of incidents, the trends will 'flatten' in due course.  Our road safety strategy is set out in detail in ‘Road Safety Strategy Statement’.  We will continue our successful programme of education, training and engineering measures.  We gather data that enables us to identify local problems and to plan our response to Government initiatives.  The engineering measures will be primarily funded from our IT block (capital) as part of integrated programmes of revenue and capital funding to achieve synergy between the different funding blocks.

We have some of the most deprived wards in the country, where tackling child casualty rates will be important.  We will continue three current initiatives in Birmingham, Sandwell and Solihull during this LTP2 period, and seek opportunities for more targeted action.

Early evidence from the Red Route pilot in Solihull shows accidents have reduced.  The roll out of the Red Route network will introduce a new tool for accident reduction.

The new approach in respect of the funding and operation of Safety Cameras, announced at the end of December 2005, will need to be reflected in our future road safety work and delivery of our strategy.  However, as the approval process for this LTP2 commenced in January 2006, before publication of the further guidance referred to in the DfT letter, there has not been sufficient time to revisit our road safety strategy or targets.  When the guidance in respect of future funding and use of Safety Cameras has been published, we look forward to taking up the offer of working closely with the DfT to review our targets and strategy delivery.