4.3.1 A summary of strengths and weaknesses for results focus is provided in Table 3.
Table 3. Strengths and weaknesses of Results Focus
4.4
Recommendations
4.4.1 This section provides the key recommendations for the IMF results focus.
Strengths
An established lead agency (DfT) with long-standing high reputation and identified Minister with road safety responsibilities.
Leadership by the DfT in moving to the Safe System approach.
National adoption of the Safe System approach in British Road Safety Statement (2015).
Understanding by many agencies and stakeholders of the importance of setting road safety goals, targets, objectives.
Long-term Safe System goal and interim casualty reduction targets set by government for Highways England with disaggregated targets across its 7 regions for the SRN.
Specific goals and targets set in walking and cycling strategy for reducing cyclist casualties.
Long-term Safe System goal and interim casualty reduction targets set by devolved administrations; by TfL for London; and in other cities such as Bristol.
At metropolitan and city level, some Mayors are providing strong road safety leadership.
Goals and targets to reduce death and serious injuries set by a number of local authorities.
Initiation of road safety management capacity review to explore opportunities for enhanced activity at national, regional and local levels.
Weaknesses
Insufficient central government leadership in road safety over the last decade.
Road safety is not perceived as core business by all responsible government agencies.
Lack of an agreed national safety performance framework to achieve results.
A strong national focus on demonstrably effective action to prevent and mitigate death and serious injury is not universal amongst agencies.
No interim targets set to reduce deaths and serious injuries at national level.
No intermediate outcomes/performance indicators agreed at national level.
No road safety targets in annual agency plans.
No explicit long-term Safe System goal set for future road safety at national level.
Formal accountabilities for improving road safety are not set out at national level.
Nationally identified priority areas for action are, as yet, insufficiently consistent with implementing a Safe System approach.
Safe System is not understood by many and is not filtering downwards from lead agency level.
A holistic Safe System approach is not evident in local authority road safety activity.
A reduction in local authority target-setting is reported.
Local priorities are often directed by perceptions of need by elected representatives and public, rather than on an evidence-base.
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Central government and its agencies 4.4.2 The DfT should:
Strengthen national leadership in delivering improvements in safety outcomes for all road users through the development and publication of a new British road safety strategy and action plan.
Strengthen the strategic capacity of RULIS to develop a new road safety strategy and to take the lead and coordinate road safety activity across DfT and with key partners.
Ensure that achieving better road safety results is seen as core business and supported by appropriate capacity by all the responsible government departments and their agencies.
Provide leadership to local authorities, encourage Safe System activity and increased understanding of the concept.
Ensure that road safety objectives are evident in the mainstream of transport strategy and policy documents and in investment strategies such as for the Major Road Network.
Ensure that identified priority areas for action are consistent with implementing Safe System.
Underpin the government’s adoption of the Safe System approach with an agreed national road safety performance framework to form the core of a new British road safety strategy. This would provide the focus for all other institutional delivery functions - coordination, legislation, funding and resource allocation, promotion, monitoring and evaluation and research and development and knowledge transfer. The national road safety performance framework would:
Set out the long-term Safe System/Towards Zero goal of working towards the ultimate prevention of deaths and serious injuries;
Set interim quantitative targets to 2030 to reduce the numbers of deaths and serious injuries;
Set measurable, intermediate outcome objectives for activities to 2030 which are directly related to the prevention of death and serious injury. The main indicators used in implementing Safe System strategies are:
1. Increasing compliance with speed limits on different road types 2. Reducing average speeds on different road types
3. Increasing the level of seat belt use and child restraint use 4. Increasing the level of helmet use for two-wheeled vehicle users 5. Reducing driving while impaired by alcohol and drugs
6. Increasing compliance with in-car telephone use rules
7. Increasing the safety quality of the SRN and main road network to the highest iRAP *rating
8. Increasing the safety quality of the new car fleet to the highest Euro NCAP * rating
9. Increasing compliance with emergency medical response times.
Set a safety performance framework for the new Major Roads Network comprising a long-term goal towards the prevention of death and serious injury, supported by interim, time-bound quantitative objectives to reduce death and serious injury, as well as setting quantitative objectives which include improvements in iRAP star ratings.
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Set out in national strategy the shared benefits that road safety can bring to other societal objectives, e.g. public health, occupational health and safety, environment, tourism and the economy.
To ensure effective shared responsibility, set out formal accountabilities for improving road safety and ensure, through high-level leadership and promotion, that road safety is seen as core business by all the responsible government departments and their agencies.
4.4.3 The Home Office should:
Recognise that the prevention of death and serious injury in road traffic is a core responsibility of the Home Office and actively support the enforcement of key road safety rules and related activity in national policing strategy.
Support the establishment of a new national road safety performance framework towards the ultimate prevention of deaths and serious injuries in road crashes and objectives for better compliance with key road safety rules.
4.4.4 The Department of Health and Social Care and its agencies, National Health England and Public Health England, should:
Recognise their core responsibility in policies and activities for road injury surveillance in the health sector, emergency medical response, major trauma care, the rehabilitation of road crash victims and road injury prevention.
Recognise in policies and activities that road traffic injury is a leading cause of death for school aged children and young adults and the lead cause of major trauma.
Support the establishment of the new road safety performance framework towards the ultimate prevention of deaths and serious injuries in road crashes.
4.4.5 The Health and Safety Executive should:
Recognise in policies and activities its core responsibility for the prevention of death and serious injury in work-related road traffic and ensure that it is in the mainstream of occupational health and safety policy.
Support the establishment of the new national road safety performance framework towards the ultimate prevention of deaths and serious injuries in road crashes. 4.4.6 The National Police Chiefs Council and police forces should:
Conduct increased enforcement of key road safety rules related to the prevention of death and serious injury.
Support improved crash investigation and encourage and facilitate the adoption by all police forces of a single reporting system – CRASH – to the national road casualty database.
Support the establishment of a national road safety performance framework towards the ultimate prevention of deaths and serious injuries in road crashes (see results focus).
4.4.7 Highways England should:
Ensure that interventions on the Strategic Road Network are appropriately focused on the prevention of death and serious injury and increasingly aligned with its long-
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term goal, interim quantitative targets, and its star rating improvement objectives rather than focussed on the prevention of all collisions.
Local government
4.4.8 Local authorities should:
Appoint a cabinet lead for road safety to ensure that road safety remains high priority for local authority activity and to improve accountability for legal duties.
Look to best international practice and city practice in London for leadership of Safe System, road safety goal and target-setting and integrating road safety into public procurement when benchmarking their activity.
Adopt the Safe System approach and long-term goal towards the ultimate prevention of death and serious injuries in road safety strategies and plans.
Set measurable targets to 2030 to reduce the numbers of deaths and serious injuries and supporting road safety performance frameworks, as proposed for the national framework.
Adopt a policy of promoting evidence-based approaches to road safety to make best use of public resource.
Engage fully and support the national implementation of the Safe System approach by implementing it into the mainstream of local authority activity in all relevant sectors, e.g. highway engineering, public health, procurement of transport services. Professional sector and civil society
4.4.9 Professional organisations, NGOs and the research sector should:
Focus activity on the prevention and mitigation of serious and fatal injury in road crashes in professional road safety work.
Engage fully and support the national implementation of the Safe System approach into the mainstream activity of all sectors concerned with road safety.
Business and industry 4.4.10 Business and industry should:
Focus on the mitigation and prevention of serious and fatal injury in road crashes and engage fully and support the national implementation of the Safe System approach into the mainstream of all sectors concerned with road safety (see also safe work travel and knowledge transfer).
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5.
COORDINATION
5.1
Classification
5.1.1 Coordination concerns the orchestration and alignment of the interventions and other related institutional management functions delivered by government partners and related community and business partnership to achieve the desired focus on results. It is addressed across four key dimensions:
Horizontally across central government;
Vertically from central to regional and local levels of government;
Specific delivery partnerships between government, non-government and business at the central, regional and local levels; and
Parliamentary and elected representative relations at central, regional and local levels.
5.1.2 The aim of coordination is to produce accountable decision-making at senior institutional levels which are appropriately resourced at national, regional and local levels. This includes an identified secretariat in the lead agency, which has an assigned role and capacity for the function, to harmonise delivery arrangements across partner agencies to achieve road safety results and to serve as a platform for mobilising political will and resource. In addition, opportunities are taken to align road safety objectives with other key sustainable development objectives, for example, public health, environmental protection, occupational health and safety and reducing disadvantage to identify shared benefits, as discussed in the Results Focus section.
5.2
Main findings
5.2.1 Successful road safety coordination in Britain is an increasingly complex task within the context of devolution and localism, the absence of national goals and targets to provide cohesion for multi-agency and multi-sectoral activity, and current budgetary constraints. Coordination across central government and key partners
5.2.2 As demonstrated both internationally and nationally, an effective partnership of governmental departments and agencies with core responsibilities is key to national delivery of better road safety results. The main government departments and agencies with road safety responsibilities are viewed as transport, highways, health, justice, policing and health and safety. Since the first British casualty reduction target was set in 1987 there has been a strong tradition in cross-agency coordination to achieve agreed targets, orchestrated on behalf of government by the lead agency, the DfT. There was extensive interdepartmental and stakeholder involvement in the development of the road safety strategy and targets for 2010, through the Interdepartmental Road Safety Working Group and a series of stakeholder groups on specific topics, followed by the setting up of a Road Safety Advisory Panel. However, the level of commitment across central government was variable, and after the second three-year review of the Strategy a Road Safety Delivery Board was established bringing together key delivery partners and tasked “to monitor progress in delivering the strategy, to sort out problems and issues, to assist in developing closer partnerships and to spread good practice.” The Scottish Government
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continues this tradition with its good practice decision-making coordination hierarchy comprising the Strategic Partnership Board and Operational Partnership Board.
5.2.3 Currently, a Road Safety Delivery Group (RSDG) brings together key departments and agencies and stakeholders to share information on national road safety activity and in support of the British Road Safety Statement and wider devolved responsibilities. Several agencies and organisations consulted49 identified that this is a valuable discussion and
information-sharing group, rather than a decision-support forum, as in previous times. The level of inter-agency coordination of former years is not evident. A lessening of interest amongst several key government agencies, as evidenced by reported lack of attendance or limited contributions to the RSDG or difficulties in bi-lateral engagement was reported to the review by several organisations. The devolved administrations, amongst others, believe there is useful information sharing within the RSDG, but missed opportunities for better coordination activity across the UK in key areas of road safety which could add value everywhere.
5.2.4 The DfT reports to a Road Safety Minister and a view was expressed that greater coordination was envisaged in terms of reporting on progress achieved on joint delivery of road safety results.
5.2.5 There is no formal inter-departmental group on road safety for government decision- making, as in previous past practice and as recommended internationally. The view within DfT is that the absence of targets and the lack of recognition that road safety delivery goes beyond the responsibilities of DfT would make it difficult to ensure that the right people would attend. Furthermore, a view was expressed that meetings might not represent good use of senior people’s time given constraints on resources. The engagement with other agencies is generally on an issue by issue basis rather than at a broad strategic level. 5.2.6 DfT works with Ministry of Justice on legislation for serious driving offences, and the Sentencing Council, (an independent body including judiciary, Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), police victims etc.), promotes greater consistency in sentencing, sets out culpability criteria and increases public understanding of sentencing, including dangerous driving. Activity around the British Road Safety Statement by different units within the DfT is coordinated by an internal DfT Portfolio Board chaired by RULIS. Some forty-seven progress reports on actions are periodically provided. The functions of this group are under review. The main links are with the Active Accessible Travel (who are responsible for walking and cycling), Freight Operator Licensing and International Vehicle Standards. However, there was little coordination evident between RULIS and Active Accessible Travel on the Cycling and Walking Strategy. The Strategy includes targets for increased cycling and walking, but does not have numerical safety targets, only a broad objective to reduce cyclist KSIs. Following the announcement of the cycle safety review responsibility for cycle safety moved to RULIS and this is a permanent change and good coordination between the two units is reported.
5.2.7 The potential for achieving better coordination across government around achieving ambitious results is seen widely by the road safety professionals as being highly desirable.
49 See Appendix B, Coordination: Central Government Departments/Agencies; and Advisory Groups, Associations and Charities
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5.2.8 On the basis of identified good practice and on the basis of findings from discussions with policymakers and stakeholders, the review concludes that a new national road safety coordination hierarchy should be established to strengthen joint working. This would comprise a Minister-led, high-level Road Safety Strategic Partnership Group (RSSPG) with senior representatives from central and local government, police and other key road safety partners focused on agreeing priorities within a new road safety strategy and steering and overseeing delivery of Safe System ambition and quantified objectives. The RSSPG would be supported by a working group comprising key departmental, agency and stakeholder representatives with operational road safety responsibilities for road safety, and independent experts, to deliver Safe System objectives through multi-sectoral activity at national and local level. Strengthened coordination would also require the strengthening of the capacity of RULIS to take the lead in coordination of road safety delivery within DfT and across all levels of government.
Figure 3. Proposal for a national road safety coordination hierarchy
ROAD SAFETY STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP GROUP (RSSPG)