Rotherham Council rejects road safety claims

The Institute of Advanced Motorists published a report stating that local councils in England had slashed their road safety budgets by 15 per cent—£23 million—last year compared to average spending cuts of just six per cent for other council services.

The figure was said to include cuts to services such as rehabilitation courses for motoring offenders, training and information for young drivers, safe routes to schools schemes and school crossing patrols.

But a spokeswoman for Rotherham Borough Council insisted: “The figures issued by the IAM are totally misleading and they certainly do not reflect the level of road safety work being carried out here in Rotherham.”

Research carried out by the IAM suggested that over half of English councils cut their spending on road safety and traffic management by more than ten per cent.

It had contacted 152 councils, of which 81 replied.

IAM chief executive Simon Best said: “Austerity is forcing councils to make difficult choices, but the fact that these cuts only represent the first year of savings under the coalition’s spending review is deeply worrying.

“Cutting road safety so hard makes no sense.

“The average wage of a lollipop lady is £3,000 a year while the cost of each road fatality is £1.6 million, so the returns on investment are huge.”

However, the borough council spokeswoman said that the IAM’s figures were based on predicted, not actual, revenue budgets and did not include any provision for the road safety schemes and initiatives that are funded from capital grants.

She added: “The main difference in the road safety budgets between 2010/11 and 2011/12 relate to the reduction in capital Local Transport Plan funding we receive for Integrated Transport schemes, which was reduced by over 50 per cent by Central Government at the start of 2011/12.

“However, Rotherham recognises the importance of delivering road safety improvements and our Local Safety Scheme programme was therefore not affected by the budget reductions as much as other programme areas.

“We continue to make road safety a priority including important road safety education and training in schools across the borough, an activity which, as a part of the South Yorkshire Safer Roads Partnership, will increase over the next two years.”

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