The Director of Technical Services submitted a report providing a road safety update and progress in reducing the number of people injured on Wirral’s roads.  The report detailed a comprehensive programme of ongoing and proposed actions by the Council and its partners in respect of road safety, which aimed to achieve the road safety objectives set out in the Council’s Corporate Plan and Wirral Local Area Agreement.

The corporate priority to reduce road traffic accidents was reflected in the Wirral Local Area Agreement for 2008 to 2011, which included the following priority areas (which were also National Performance Indicators):

• NI 47 – People killed or seriously injured in road traffic accidents; and

• NI 48 – Children killed or seriously injured in road traffic accidents.

Wirral’s current performance for these two key indicators was detailed in appendices 1-3 of the report.

Ongoing analysis of casualty data on Wirral had revealed that during the five years since 2004 when the KSI casualty record peaked at 203 KSIs (Appendix 3, Figure 1), the numbers of people Killed or Seriously Injured had steadily declined by an average of 6.6% per year, resulting in a total reduction in KSIs of 30% by 2009.  Whilst Wirral continued to make steady progress in improving road safety, it was unlikely that it would meet the national target for all deaths and serious injuries by the end of 2010.

The total number of people killed or seriously Injured during the most recent complete calendar year, 2009, was 142 against the corresponding interim target of 123 KSI.  Whilst still above target for all age groups of KSI casualties it was noted that during the last 10 years the total number of casualties had fallen from 1933 in 2000 to 991 in 2009, some 49%.

The Director reported that, in recognition of the key importance of Road Safety to the Council and the Community as a whole, Wirral’s Accident Reduction Partnership had developed a Road Safety Action Plan for implementation during 2010/11 (Appendix 4) which covered five main workstreams:

•   Enforcement (ENF);

•   Education, Training & Publicity (ETP);

•   School Travel Planning (STP);

•   Communications (COM); and

•   Engineering (ENG).

He reported that close working between key partners was a key feature of this Road Safety Action Plan and was essential to ensure effective interventions to deal with potential future areas for action such as casualties involving older people, pedestrians, motorcyclists and in-car casualties. There was also a rigorous approach to the monitoring and delivery of the Road Safety Action Plan which included: regular performance management reports to chief officers and elected members; quarterly inter-agency meetings between key partners; reporting through the LAA management structures; and regular Cabinet member briefings.  The Council also implemented a range of physical works to achieve road safety objectives contained within the Local Transport Plan (LTP) Road Safety Block.  The 2010/11 programme included an overall allocation of £980,000 for safety schemes which was approved by Cabinet on 4^th February 2010 (Minute 315).

The Director responded to a range of issues raised by including:

-  the sharing of best practice and benchmarking with the best performing authorities;

-  enforcement and an acknowledgement of the support received from Merseyside Police at Area Command level;

-  the prevention of Drink Driving, associated initiatives and enforcement;

-  budget reductions (paragraph 7.1) - and the response indicating that these were road safety encouragement measures which would not directly affect road casualties;

-  de-regulation and the enforcement of waiting restrictions outside schools

Resolved – That the Committee:

(1)  Note the progress in improving road safety performance and analysis of casualty data outlined in this report;

(2)  Endorse the proposed Road Safety Action Plan for 2010/11.