Memorandum from the Audit Commission (RS
38)
The Audit Commission is an independent body
responsible for ensuring that public money is spent economically,
efficiently and effectively, to achieve high-quality local services
for the public. Our remit covers around 11,000 bodies in England,
which between them spend more than £180 billion of public
money each year. Our work covers local government, health, housing,
community safety and fire and rescue services.
As an independent watchdog, we provide important
information on the quality of public services. As a driving force
for improvement in those services, we provide practical recommendations
and spread best practice. As an independent auditor, we ensure
that public services are good value for money and that public
money is properly spent.
SUMMARY
1. The Audit Commission welcomes the opportunity
to provide evidence to the House of Commons Transport Committee
inquiry. Our submission is based mainly on our study into local
delivery of road safety, published in February 2007 (1). The submission
below considers targets, staffing levels and partnerships. It
supports the use of targets but argues that these must be sensitively
applied at a local level. We outline particular staff shortages
but also point to a way forward, involving greater partnership
working between relevant local agencies to help make the most
effective use of available resources.
DETAILED RESPONSE
Use of targets
2. Interviews with local authority road
safety professionals revealed that targets provide a helpful focus
for road safety activity and provide a strong negotiating tool
when decisions on service budgets are being made. Some authorities
were able to negotiate targets that were more demanding than the
national one, through local public service agreements, securing
additional funding from government. This provided an added incentive
for road safety activity.
3. A further motivation is that local progress
against the national targets is included in the current annual
assessment of councils (Comprehensive Performance Assessment)
carried out by the Audit Commission, and as such, contributes
to the overall assessment of the authority.
4. The new performance framework for local
government that will apply from 2009 will offer councils and their
partners more discretion to negotiate a set of local priorities
that will be set out in a Local Area Agreement (LAA). One of the
foundations of this new system is the establishment of a new set
of 198 national performance indicators. These will be used by
councils and government offices to define the targets within the
LAA. Two of the indicators, (NI47; the number of people killed
or seriously injured and NI48; the number of children killed or
seriously injured) reflect the current national road safety targets.
The process of negotiating LAAs and subsequent monitoring of the
indicators within the performance framework will ensure the issue
is still under scrutiny. There will be a particular focus on those
places where casualty reduction is prioritised within Local Area
Agreements.
5. In small authorities, for example Hartlepool,
with low numbers of fatal and serious casualties, measuring progress
based upon year-on-year figures can be misleading because their
statistics are heavily influenced by random fluctuations in casualties
and so more difficult for an authority itself to detect trends
and influence them. Therefore, local year on year targets may
be seen to be penalising small councils for performance which
is essentially beyond their control. One way to militate against
this is to consider council-level progress over a rolling three-year
period, rather than for a single year so that underlying trends
are more evident. This is the model currently used in Audit Commission
assessments of casualty reduction efforts. An alternative approach
would be to use pooled targets between a number of adjoining councils,
such as at the police authority scale.
6. In addition, any future targets should
be consistent across all public bodies working towards them (councils,
police, and so on). Currently, councils and police forces have
casualty reduction targets that are constructed differently, potentially
stifling partnership working. We would therefore advocate that
government's proposed approach of councils and police sharing
the national indicators for road casualty reduction should continue
beyond 2010. National and local targets might also usefully take
into account discrepancies between figures for road casualty figures
recorded by police and those for hospital admissions. This would
help address casualty reduction efforts among groups under-represented
in police figures, building on Department for Transport research
(2).
Staffing issues
7. We found increasing numbers of road safety
(education) officers in many areas often because of specific government
sponsored schemes, such as school travel plan advisors. Though
this additional funding was welcomed, councils raised concerns
about continuity after the expiration of these schemes. This issue
presents a challenge for councils in managing temporary funding
and ensuring adequate maintenance of schemes once established.
Also, there are sometimes shortages of volunteers with particular
skills, such as cycling proficiency instructors.
8. A recurring theme from our study was
that councils reported a shortage of engineers with specific experience
in designing for road safety. Some authorities managed this through
long-term contracts with private firms to provide these services—in
effect these engineers are shared between councils rather than
employed directly.
9. In addition, there were generally insufficient
data analysis skills for comparing different sources of data on
road traffic accidents. This was principally a reflection of such
activity being a low priority, and not being seen as core to casualty
reduction delivery. However, a data-led approach, with a robust
understanding of who is injured on the road, and where, is essential
for evidence-based casualty reduction measures. A shortage of
analysis skills risks uninformed allocation of scarce resources.
10. As noted above, we found that some councils
already effectively share valuable skills and knowledge. The general
shortage of skills perhaps points towards greater pooling of valuable
skills and knowledge between councils.
11. We also found that other staff of local
public bodies can influence road users. For example, teachers
are well placed to remind pupils of the importance of road safety
issues and firefighters can stress the same issues at school open
days. A more integrated approach between partners can exploit
respective strengths; for example, fire-fighters may have more
credibility than council officers in delivering road safety messages
to teenagers.
12. The benefits of a partnership approach
are important, where messages delivered through various channels
are complementary, coordinated and delivered through the most
effective channels.
Further policies to consider for adoption
13. Our fieldwork highlighted the differing
contributions that local agencies can make to casualty reduction
and that they can be most effective when their efforts are coordinated.
Any partnership set up to address these issues should evaluate
itself to ensure continued relevance. The Audit Commission has
devised a framework for improving road safety working, along with
improvement questions tailored to relevant local agencies, for
this purpose (3).
REFERENCES
1 Audit Commission, Changing Lanes: Evolving
Roles in Road Safety, Audit Commission, 2007.
2 Department for Transport, The Use of Hospital
Data on Road Accidents, Department for Transport, 2007.
3 www.audit-commission.gov.uk/roadsafety/.
February 2008
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