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ITEM EX9

THAMES VALLEY SAFER ROADS PARTNERSHIP –
APPROVAL OF NEW SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENT

1. The County Council has been participating in the Thames Valley Safer Roads Partnership since April 2000. This partnership is one of eight pilot projects involving the use of net revenue from traffic safety cameras to fund increased enforcement and speed related road safety initiatives ("Netting Off projects"). The Government has now announced that the project is to be rolled out nationally to all Police Forces and Local Authorities. This report seeks the Executive’s approval to a new Service Level Agreement between the partners in the Thames Valley Region to allow the project to continue into year 3 and beyond.

Background

2. The Thames Valley Safer Roads Partnership is a partnership between Thames Valley Police, the Thames Valley Magistrates Service, the Crown Prosecution Service, the 9 Local Highway Authorities and the Highways Agency. The aim of the project is to reduce the instance of reported injury collisions by increased enforcement of speed limits at locations with clusters of speed related collisions involving personal injury and by the increased promotion of road safety initiatives aimed at raising public awareness of the dangers of excessive or inappropriate speed. The Partnership’s bid for year 3 of the project has been accepted by DTLR on condition that we have a new Service Level Agreement in place between the partners. This bid includes the sum of £247,000 for the County Council for new camera sites and additional road safety education training and publicity.
3. The DTLR have also introduced new rules for the operation of Netting Off projects and these are still waiting to be finalised. They will however, include new criteria for the location of fixed site and mobile cameras and the latest available details of this criteria are given in Annex 1. These are much stricter than the previous Thames Valley Police criteria and will limit the locations at which cameras can be installed. There is also likely to be a condition that we should consider relocating existing cameras where we cannot demonstrate that there was a pre-installation personal injury collision problem at that location. However, at present it appears that authorities ‘should consider’ relocation rather than ‘must’ relocate cameras at sites with low levels of personal injury collisions, allowing an element of flexibility.

Service Level Agreement

4. Details of the new Service Level Agreement (SLA) are given in Annex 2. This is very similar to the existing SLA that was signed for the pilot project. It commits us to operating within the agreed camera site criteria or relevant national handbook rules. It also states that the County Council will be liable for any deficit within the project proportionate to our expenditure in that year.

Director’s Comments

5. There are two options available to the Council. The first is to continue within the project, which will bind the authority to operating within the rules set out in the national handbook for Netting Off projects. This will restrict the authority to only installing cameras at sites which meet the criteria set out in Annex 1. If this option is chosen then it is also recommended that the Director be authorised to continue discussions with the project partners and DTLR to agree appropriate enforcement strategies for both Oxfordshire and the Thames Valley region.
6. The second option is to withdraw from the project, which would mean that we not be bound by the rules in the national handbook for Netting Off projects. However, Thames Valley Police would then be unable to do any enforcement of safety cameras either fixed or mobile within Oxfordshire. This would mean that although we would have the freedom to place cameras where we considered appropriate, they would not be operated and would therefore quickly lose any deterrent effect. We would also lose the additional revenue available for camera hardware and speed-related road safety initiatives. This option would seriously jeopardise the County Council’s casualty reduction efforts and make it exceedingly difficult to achieve the national casualty reduction targets for Oxfordshire.
7. My view is that it is better to remain in the project and work within the new rules whilst negotiating enforcement strategies to maximise the casualty reduction benefits for Oxfordshire.

Financial and Staff Implications

8. The project, if successful, will allow up to an additional £247,000 to be spent within Oxfordshire on safety cameras and speed related road safety. There is a financial risk that if the project runs into deficit then the County Council would have to cover a share of this deficit proportional to its spend in that year. (In the two-year pilot the project has always returned a substantial surplus to the DTLR.)

RECOMMENDATIONS

9. The Executive is RECOMMENDED to:

1. authorise the conclusion of a Service Level Agreement, generally as set out in Annex 2 to the report, with the partners in the Thames Valley Safer Roads Project; and
2. authorise the Director of Environmental Services, in consultation with the Executive Member for Transport, to continue discussions with the partners and the DTLR to agree appropriate enforcement strategies for the project.

DAVID YOUNG
Director of Environmental Services

Contact Officer: Phil Crossland, Tel: Oxford 815083

21 February 2002

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