DfT approves £47.5m for 27 high priority road safety schemes

Twenty seven schemes will benefit from a £47.5m injection into enhancing the safety of some of the most high-risk roads in England, the Department for Transport has announced.

The third round of the Safer Roads Fund, will support new schemes for re-designing junctions, improving pedestrian crossings, improving signage and road markings amongst other measures.

This additional investment builds on the government’s plans to recruit a specialised team of inspectors to build the country’s first ever Road Safety Investigation Branch, says DfT. The team will look at how and why incidents happen and build an enhanced understanding of how we can better mitigate collisions.

To date, £100m has been provided through the programme to improve the 50 most dangerous roads in England, the majority of which are rural roads.

The new allocation of £47.5m to 27 different schemes has been based on data independently surveyed and provided by the Road Safety Foundation. The data analysed is based on a road safety risk, looking at data on those killed and seriously injured alongside traffic levels.

The previous rounds of the Safer Roads Fund programme focused on treating the 50 highest-risk local ‘A road’ sections in England with enhanced road safety engineering interventions. The overall scheme is set to prevent around 1,450 fatal and serious injuries over the next 20 years.

According to Road Safety Foundation analysis, early estimates suggest that the £47.5 m investment should prevent around 760 fatal and serious injuries over the next 20 years, with a benefit to society of £420m.

Once the whole life costs are factored in for the schemes, the overall benefit cost ratio of the investment is estimated at 7.4, meaning for every £1 invested the societal benefit would be £7.40.

Dr Suzy Charman, Executive Director of the Road Safety Foundation said: “The commitment and funding announced today is transformational for road safety teams in local authorities across the country. It will allow them to proactively reduce risk and make these 27 roads safer and more inviting for all road users.

“Systematic changes have already had a big impact on road death and serious injury, for example seatbelts and airbags protect lives when crashes happen. In the same way we can design roads safely so when crashes occur, people can walk away” said Charman. “This can be done by clearing or protecting roadsides, putting in cross hatchings to add space between vehicles which provides safer junctions like roundabouts, or adding signalisation and/or turning pockets, and including facilities for walking and cycling.”

The 27 schemes receiving funding from the Safer Roads Fund 3 are:

A586, Blackpool Council, £1,100,000

A35, Bournemouth Borough Council, £1,890,625

A2010, Brighton and Hove City Council, £600,000

A52, Derby City Council, £475,000

A104, Essex County Council, £1,360,000

A35, Hampshire County Council, £6,040,000

A5183, Hertfordshire County Council, £1,800,000

A165, Hull City Council, £2,990,625

A3056, Isle of Wight Council, £2,140,000

A5105, Lancashire County Council, £920,000

A5038, Liverpool City Council, £859,375

A186, Newcastle Upon Tyne City Council, £3,650,000

A6130, Nottingham City Council, £950,000

A609, Nottingham City Council, £475,000

A4158, Oxfordshire County Council, £800,000

A4165, Oxfordshire County Council, £875,000

A2047, Portsmouth City Council, £1,300,000

A6022, Rotherham Metro. Borough Council, £750,000 A6042, Salford City Council, £743,750

A4030, Sandwell Metro. Borough Council, £750,000

A625, Sheffield City Council, £1,425,000

A3025, Southampton City Council, £875,000

A13, Southend-on-Sea Council, £3,425,000

A1156, Suffolk County Council £1,275,000

A25, Surrey County Council, £1,800,000

A439, Warwickshire County Council, £1,320,000

A3102, Wiltshire Council, £6,980,000