Transport Insights

There’s a bit more from road safety minister Lilian Greenwood about this week’s announcement of £5m for four new schemes under the Safer Roads Fund, with an acknowledgement that the cash only takes road safety “a little further forward”.

Posting on LinkedIn, Greenwood referred to awards to existing schemes at the House of Lords event on Tuesday and directly named the four new schemes, but not the individual amounts awarded:

There’s a lot more work still to do. But we’ve moved that work a little further forward as I announced a further £5 million to support four new Safer Roads Fund schemes across the country:

• The A188 through Newcastle and North Tyneside
• The A1074 from Longwater to Norwich City
• The A611 Hucknall Road in Nottingham
• The A319 in Chobham to the A320 in Guildford

People in the western half of England might wonder whether “across the country” is a bit of an exaggeration for just four schemes in the North East, the East Midlands, East Anglia and the South East.

Meanwhile the scheme in Nottingham (which Greenwood represents) has had some press coverage, but there is still no sign of an announcement from Norfolk and the Department for Transport doesn’t seem to think the cash warrants a press release.

Greenwood added:

This is putting our Road Safety Strategy into action, which is addressing everything from how drivers are licensed to the infrastructure that makes up our roads.

As I commented yesterday, if putting up another £5m for a scheme that the last government put £195m into is “putting our Road Safety Strategy into action” your commitment to addressing “the infrastructure that makes up our roads” isn’t a strong one.

I’m still not clear if the £5m is new money rather than unspent earlier funding and I have asked Greenwood this.