Making it Count - New Guidance for Local Authorities

29 September 2010

'Making it Count' addresses the difficult spending choices that will have to be made over the coming months. It outlines the role local authorities can play in protecting their residents’ quality and length of life and offers guidance about where to look for additional financial and informative support.

Given the significance of the public spending decisions that lie ahead, the document has been produced by a variety of organisations working together – the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety (PACTS), the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA), Road Safety Great Britain, the Institute of Road Safety Officers (IRSO), the Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning and Transport (ADEPT), the GreenSafe Foundation, TRL (Transport Research Laboratory) and Chris Lines Consulting.

The guidance sets out a variety of issues that local authorities should consider when making decisions about scaling-back road safety funding.

Local authorities have legal responsibilities for road safety and they are, in fact, the lead delivery agent of road safety activity. This arrangement has been very successful and is one of the main reasons why Britain has seen such significant reductions in road death and injury. Deaths on the road have fallen from around 5,000 a year at the start of the 1990s to 2,222 in 2009.

However, road death and injury continue to plague communities, and there is the very real danger that spending cuts could result in the long-term and consistent trend of falling road deaths and injury being reversed, with more rather than fewer people dying on our roads.