Road Safety - By Accident or Design? GUIDELINES FOR IMPROVING ROAD SAFETY IN REGENERATION AREAS
3. Key Stakeholders and agencies
Multi-agency approach
Regeneration within Scotland involves many different key stakeholders and agencies and it is sometimes difficult to understand fully what all their roles and responsibilities actually are. The key stakeholders are those that are integral to the delivery of the regeneration project and they are informed during the life of the project by other agencies who supply specialist advise and support.
This chapter identifies the key stakeholders and agencies that are currently engaged in regeneration in Scotland. It also provides guidance on how each of these key stakeholders and agencies should be engaged to ensure the opportunity to improve road safety is maximised.
The community
Community groups
Community groups can come under many guises such as residents associations, neighbourhood watch groups, parent and toddler groups, pensioners groups etc.
Community groups form an essential link between the project manager who has the responsibility of developing the regeneration proposals and the community intended to benefit from them. Local residents have an unrivalled knowledge of the road safety issues in their own community and can provide information that would otherwise be very difficult to identify.
These guidelines can be used by community groups to identify the agencies that can help them improve road safety in their community. They also give guidance on the range of sustainable solutions that are available to solve the road safety problems the community may be experiencing.
Community Councils
A Community Council consists of a number of local residents who are elected to promote their local community's interests. The community councillors will act on behalf of their community and will be able to provide a valuable contribution during the any community consultation.
Local Committees
Some of Scotland's local authorities have established a system of local committees that have been introduced to improve the public's access to their council and councillors. The committees generally meet periodically at a local venue and the public are given the opportunity to comment and raise questions relating to local issues.
The local committees provide a good forum for the council to present ideas to the public and receive comments and can help facilitate effective community consultation.
Special Interest Groups
Special interest groups represent the needs of specific groups of people within society whose needs do not always take precedence on the political agenda e.g. the mobility impaired, the elderly, children, cyclists, pedestrians and many more.
These groups must be engaged in the community consultation as part of the inter-agency approach. They can provide a voice for members of communities who may otherwise be excluded from consultation.
Elected members
In Scotland the public's interests are represented in the European Parliament by their Member of the European Parliament (MEP), at Westminster by their Member of Parliament (MP), at Holyrood by their Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) and locally by the Councillor.
Elected members play an important role within regeneration projects in Scotland. Their responsibilities include participating of regeneration projects, facilitating and coordinating consultation, and helping to ensure their community's interests and aspirations are fully satisfied by the project.
Funding providers
The main source of funding for the vast majority of regeneration areas in Scotland is provided by the Scottish Executive. The funding from this source is normally allocated to an agency, such as Communities Scotland, who acts as or appoints a project manager who is responsible for delivering the project on time, within budget and to an appropriate level of quality. The Scottish Executive also provides funding for specific road safety initiatives, such as cycling, walking and safer streets projects and the introduction of 20 mph speed limits outside schools.
Scottish Enterprise is Scotland's main economic development agency, funded by the Scottish Executive. Scottish Enterprise's key mission is to help the people and businesses of Scotland succeed. To this end it is actively supporting the regeneration of many of Scotland's disadvantaged communities. A stronger economy can be built on revitalised communities by helping to tackle unemployment and social exclusion and improve training opportunities.
Local Authorities provide funding for road safety through their capital and revenue budgets. The capital budget can be used to fund specific road safety schemes identified in the capital programme or to fund more general road safety initiatives. The revenue budget can be used to pay for staff costs, such as school crossing patrols and road safety professionals. The revenue budget can also be utilised to promote road safety through the local authorities road maintenance programme.
The private sector makes contributions towards improving road safety when developers enter into Section 753 agreements with a local authority. This involves a developer agreeing to provide funding for or actually implementing measures that will improve road safety conditions as part of the planning agreement for the development.
The European Union (EU) has an annual budget of over 90 billion Euros. Most of EU funding is not paid directly by the European Commission but through the national and regional authorities of the member states. All EU funding is channelled towards precise objectives identified in common policies, which are based on provisions agreed in treaties. In order to ensure their funding is spent wisely, the Commission carries out a number of evaluation projects each year.
The guidelines identify an evaluation process, based on those undertaken by the EU that will allow the funding provider to monitor inter-agency working and ensure road safety issues are being fully considered.
Communities Scotland
Communities Scotland is the Scottish Executive's housing and regeneration agency. Its main objective is to help create a Scotland where no one is excluded from enjoying a successful, sustainable and healthy life. Communities Scotland works with other stakeholders and agencies to regenerate disadvantaged communities and promote better housing.
Communities Scotland's main mechanism for delivering change is through the relationship it has built and developed with its partners. It targets investment towards a number of partners who are delivering change, such as:
- Social Inclusion Partnerships;
- Community Planning Partnerships;
- Local authorities;
- Social economy organisations that are tackling disadvantage.
Regeneration partnerships
Social Inclusion Partnerships (SIPs)
There are 48 SIPs in Scotland, 34 are area-based initiatives and 14 are thematic initiatives. The SIPs key objective is to tackle poverty and disadvantage in communities across Scotland.
The SIPs are a partnership of a number of stakeholders and agencies, which include the community, the local authority, local enterprise companies, local health trusts and the voluntary and private sectors.
Communities Scotland is currently providing a supportive role in assisting SIPs to merge and integrate fully with Community Planning Partnerships.
Community Planning Partnerships (CPPs)
The Scottish Executive is keen to strengthen the contribution that SIPs make to tackling poverty and disadvantage. It wants to strengthen the role the community makes in relation to decision making. SIPs are currently in the process of becoming Community Planning Partnerships.
CPPs will build on the strengths of the existing SIPs and ensure that regeneration takes place in Scotland with decisions being made at the neighbourhood level within a national framework.
The guidelines recognise the important role the CPPs will make towards regenerating Scotland's disadvantaged communities. They will provide guidance to CPPs on how they can interact to ensure road safety issues are considered and dealt with effectively in their communities.
Local Authorities
Local authorities have a number of roles relating to regeneration projects and their successful introduction. The departmental structure will vary from one local authority to an other. The following list gives the roles that a local authority will normally have to fulfil.
Community Safety Partnerships
A Community Safety Partnership (CSP) has been created for each local authority area in Scotland. Each CSP includes representatives from the local authority, police, fire and health authority. The CSPs main objective is to help create an environment where people can live, work and visit without fear for their own or other's safety. The improvement of road safety comes under the remit of CSPs.
CSPs are funded by the Scottish Executive Community Safety Partnership Award Programme which has made 4 million of funding available for 2004-5. 3.2 million of this funding is distributed to the CSPs according to calculations based of population size and crimes per head of population.
The remaining 800,000 is distributed to CSPs based on the submission of a local community safety action plan by the local authority. This action plan is informed by a local audit that identifies the priorities for improving community safety and crime prevention in the local authority area. The local audit includes the collation of relevant statistics e.g. crime, road accidents, accidents in the home, and information derived from community consultation on the issue of community safety.
Each submission is assessed by a panel drawn from the Scottish Local Authority Community Safety Officers Forum (SLACS), the police and the Scottish Executive according to a points system. The points system considers the following issues:
- Evidence that partnership arrangements were in place at a strategic level;
- Community safety audit carried out and statistical evidence to support the
- strategy and action plan;
- Strategy document;
- Co-ordination arrangements;
- Specific and comprehensive strategic action plan produced with clear priorities
- and targets;
- Evidence of monitoring and evaluation;
- Presentation.
Assessment of the local community safety action plan places emphasis on evidence presented of inter-agency working and coordination, and that the action plan is directly influenced by the local audit.
Education
Education departments are responsible for providing an education for children from pre-school through to secondary school, and also in providing community education for those wishing to participate in life-long learning.
Road safety is a very important issue for children and adults. The guidelines give advice on where schools and the community can receive advice on road safety initiatives, such as Safer Routes to School schemes.
School Travel Co-ordinators
School Travel Co-ordinators are employed by local authorities to co-ordinate the development and implementation of school travel plans. School travel plans promote the use of more sustainable modes of travel to school to reduce the number of car trips for this journey.
A key task for School Travel Co-ordinators is to liaise between the schools, engineers, planners and police to effectively implement school travel plans. Whilst the key objective of school travel plans is to reduce the number of journeys to school made by car, the travel plan will aim to ensure that children can safely make the journey to school by non-car modes such as walking, cycling or the bus.
School Travel Co-ordinators are commonly engaged in the implementation of the Safer Routes to School Programme as part of school travel plans. Safer Routes to School is a national programme promoted by Sustrans to provide guidance for schools on how to encourage and enable children to walk and cycle to school through a combined package of practical and educational measures.
School Travel Co-ordinators will play a vital role in any inter-agency approach to road safety. With a good understanding of the key routes children follow to school and the road safety issues they come up against, School Travel Co-ordinators can provide an unrivalled knowledge of road safety issues across a wide area of a community.
Housing
Housing departments are responsible for managing local housing stock. Often when major funding is made available for regeneration schemes, it is the housing department that assumes the role of project manager. Some of the responsibilities for managing the local authorities housing stock can be transferred to housing associations.
Planning
Planning departments are responsible for producing the development plans and ensuring that development is undertaken in accordance with this through the planning processes.
The planning department control the final form of all development proposals and therefore are a major influence on regeneration projects that require planning consent.
It is important that the planning department ensures that road safety issues are considered. However, they will sometimes only see development proposals at a relatively advanced stage when it is too late to ensure the opportunity for improving road safety is optimised.
The planning department will normally play an important role in masterplanning exercises and it is vital that they ensure that road safety is properly considered at this stage.
The guidelines highlight the importance of incorporating road safety into the planning process to improve road safety in regeneration areas.
Roads and Transportation
Roads authorities are statutory consultees in the planning process and will normally contribute to the local authority's planning process, considering development applications to determine if the proposals satisfy their policy objectives. They will ensure that the proposals address road safety, but as for the planning department this will tend to be at the relatively advanced planning stage, when the opportunity to influence the form of the proposal may be limited.
Along with their colleagues in planning they will contribute to masterplanning exercises. The importance of identifying road safety issues at this stage cannot be over emphasised, if the potential to improve road safety within the community is to be fully realised.
It is important that road safety professionals are consulted during regeneration projects to ensure that their expertise is fully utilised. Some examples of good practice have the developers consulting Roads and Transportation at an early stage in the design process.
The guidelines explain how the expertise held within Roads and Transportation can be fully utilised in regeneration schemes.
Economic Development
A local authority's economic development team delivers their Council's economic development objectives in a way that promotes and supports the sustainable creation of jobs, wealth and opportunity for all.
The economic developments team's responsibilities may include maximising access to training and employment, improve the quality of the tourism product and raise visitor satisfaction levels, and through partnership working promote sustainable economic regeneration in priority action areas.
In order to create safe, vibrant and inclusive communities through economic regeneration the economic development team will normally work in close partnership with community groups, the local councillor, and other sections of their local authority.
Police and emergency services
The Police have a key role to play in road safety. In some police force areas the Road Safety Officers are employed by the Chief Constable and they work closely with their colleagues in the force and constituent local authorities. Police activities include enforcement of road traffic law, education and consultation on road safety and other traffic related schemes. It is the police who collect the accident data that are widely used by local authorities to identify accident problems.
Secured by Design is a national police initiative to encourage developers to build with crime prevention in mind. Developers are issued with the Secured by Design award if a development meets certain crime prevention criteria set out by the Association of Chief Police Officers. Many of the measures recommended to prevent crime such as improved street lighting and pathways safety can also tackle community road safety issues.
The Fire Service and Ambulance Service are also closely involved in road safety and are primarily concerned with the reduction in the severity and frequency of road accidents. They are important for identifying key community safety issues and in the monitoring of the effectiveness of measures to overcome such issues.
The emergency services must be consulted in an inter-agency approach to road safety. Depending on the nature of the road safety project being undertaken they may simply act as consultees or may play a more integral role in the design process e.g. Secured by Design.
Road Safety Officers
Road Safety Officers may be located in police forces or local authorities. They provide advice on local road safety issues as well as promoting road safety education, publicity and training, for example, within the school curriculum.
Road Safety Officers will play an important role in any project to improve road safety. With an unrivalled knowledge of the identification of road safety problems and their solutions they can provide a rich source of advice, support and professional expertise.
Design Team
Architects will normally develop the masterplan or detailed plans for a regeneration area, with input from engineers, urban designers, and planners. It is the responsibility of the design team to understand the community safety issues pertinent to the masterplan area to ensure that final designs meet the needs of the community.
In smaller scale road safety projects the design team is likely to be composed of professionals working directly in road safety such as traffic engineers and road safety officers.
The design team has to meet the challenge of working within the constraints dictated by the design guidance set out by the local authority whilst addressing the issues identified by the community.
Housing Associations
A housing association uses government grants and bank loans to provide good quality housing for rent and for sale. It consists of a committee of volunteers, some of whom may be tenants, who are responsible for the appointment of the association's staff and the co-ordination of its activities.
It is important when housing associations appoint architects that they are aware of the need to identify road safety issues at the start of the design exercise. The guidelines give advice on when it is best to engage with the community and the appropriate professional to identify road safety problems and solutions.
Private developers
A private developer or contractor will normally be employed by the project manager to develop housing or other pieces of infrastructure as part of a regeneration project.
National road safety campaign groups
A number of organisations provide support and guidance on road safety and community safety in Scotland.
The Scottish Road Safety Campaign (SRSC)
Funded by the Scottish Executive, the Scottish Road Safety Campaign (SRSC) develops, coordinates and promotes Scottish national road safety education and initiatives. The SRSC operates through a number of committees with members drawn from local authorities and police forces as well as from other national bodies with an involvement in road safety.
The SRSC will promote these guidelines and play a secondary role advising and supporting partnership agencies involved in an inter-agency approach to road safety.
The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA)
RoSPA is a registered charity providing support, advice, resources and training for the promotion of safety in all areas of life including road safety and community safety. It aims to achieve its objectives through working with central and local government, the police, and public and private sector organisations.
As providers of safety training and supporters of initiatives that will encourage improved safety in the community, RoSPA, as with the SRSC, will play a secondary role in the inter-agency approach presented in these guidelines. RoSPA coordinate and administer a significant proportion of the road safety training of road safety professionals who will be involved in the inter-agency approach.