The London Road Safety Council has issued a warning that the UK’s reputation as a world leader in road casualty reduction is slipping away through a lack of investment in road safety.
Statistics show the downward trend in fatalities achieved from 2005 to 2010 is bottoming out, and the LRSC* fears this is a result of a continuing decline in the funding of all resources aimed at making the roads safer, including local authority road safety teams.
The LRSC regularly takes a census of road safety staff in the 33 London authorities, and since 2010 this census shows a two-thirds reduction in the number of officers directly involved in road accident prevention.
LRSC points to the borough of Redbridge, where this Friday (30 June) three full time road safety officers are being made redundant – to be replaced by one part-time employee.
Cllr Wendy Brice-Thompson, chair of the LRSC, said: “We are alarmed by the cutbacks that have affected all strands of casualty reduction work in London. There fewer officers directly involved in traditional education, training and publicity (ETP) work, with many sidelined to focus on modal shift behaviour change work.
“There are also funding changes that have affected highway maintenance, accident investigation and prevention (AIP) work and roads policing, all combining to a bottoming out of the progress we had been making as leaders in casualty reduction work.
“This week the experienced team of three road safety officers at Redbridge Council are leaving due to redundancy, and we understand the Council intends to recruit a more junior, part-time officer to cover their responsibilities. This does not pass the common-sense test when you consider the needs of the Redbridge community.
“In addition, we see an erosion of the School Crossing Patrol service in many areas, which, at a time when such effort is being made to encourage more children to walk to school, seems bizarre.”
The LRSC believes that there should be a change in the legislation detailing the statutory duty that authorities have for road casualty prevention.
Cllr Wendy Brice-Thompson added: “We would like to see ministers prescribing the ratios of staff to population, and suggest one full time road safety officer for every 100,000 of population.
“Other solutions include direct government funding for this work, which has proven to work and which continues to attract much interest from other parts of the world.”
*The LRSC is unique in that it has a membership of elected council members and professional road safety officers from the London boroughs. Transport for London (TfL) and other stakeholders, including the Metropolitan Police and City of London Police forces, are also represented.
We need to think widely here and recommend making road safety part of infrastructure design. Regarding the suggestion of 1 RSO per 100K of the population, some other ratios are of interest. Amsterdam has 1 kilometre of cycleway per 2,000 inhabitants while London has 1 kilometre per 500,000 inhabitants. It is no coincidence that the Netherlands has a much better safety record for vulnerable road users. We need safe infrastructure as much, if not more, than we need RSOs.
Paul Gannon UK
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With jobs disappearing in the profession at an alarming rate what has happened to the dissenting voices of the big road safety players. Those that have some sphere of influence. In the past the Redbridge situation would have been met with pressure being applied to the authority – particularly by RoSPA. So time for the ‘Royal Society’ to stick their heads above the parapet for the first time since Dave Rodgers and his team along with others saved Wakefield and stand up for many of the dedicated people in road safety that are their members. I am sure they would be fully supported by other like minded organisations such as RSGB.
Bill, Glasgow
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One RSO for 100,000 population is interesting. Here in Westminster we have a “resident” population of over 250,000 but a daily population estimated by the police and our own counts to be in excess of 1.5 million due to employment, leisure activities and tourism. Which figure should we use?
Peter Wilson Westminster city Council
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Your question is valid Gill, I hope she did have a positive effect but it is extremely difficult to prove. Time WILL tell if there are any casualties outside the school. However, what it is very unlikely to tell you is if those casualties are a direct result of the lack of an RSO. Attributing success or failure (more of less casualties) to RS education when it is just one strand of road safety is too simplistic an assumption. There are clear warnings against making such assumptions in OBA (Outcomes Based Analysis) training. That’s my 3 post limit reached already.
Pat, Wales
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I recently met up with a now retired safety officer from my local authority. I met her about 6 years ago and now she is working in a shop having been let go as her service was no longer required or rather no monies for.
She had worked for about 10 years with this authority and her prime aim and focus was the vulnerability of school kids outside school. For the last 7 years she had a record of nil incidents when it came to this matter. So no kids having accidents outside of school.
The question is, did she have a positive effect or was she being paid for doing nothing as there had been no incidents involving kids? Now she is gone only time will tell.
g craven
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A sad state of affairs. I would like to know what road safety experience (front line experience, not just managing budgets) the decision makers have who made the Redbridge and other RSO posts redundant. It defies common sense.
Pat, Wales
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One full time RSO for every 100,000 of population isn’t asking for a lot. This should be seen as a very pragmatic absolute minimum, not a bargaining stance to be haggled down on to something less.
Pat, Wales
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