£5 million boost for safer roads across the East Midlands

£5.025 million total investment for North Northamptonshire and Nottingham City councils, as part of a £38.3 million government investment to improve road safety on 17 of the country’s most high risk roads

Improvements to the A6, A60,and A6200, are expected to prevent around 53 fatal and serious injuries over 20 years

Part of the £185.8m investment to prevent over 2600 fatal and serious injuries over the next 20 years

Drivers across the East Midlands will benefit from a £5.02 million boost for safety improvements to the A6, A60, and A6200 as part of the Government’s investment into 17 of the most high risk roads in England, the Department for Transport has announced today (19 March 2024).

Over a 20 year period, this £2.20m funding for North Northamptonshire and £3.4m for Nottingham City Council will see significant reductions in fatal and serious injuries, expecting to prevent as many as 53.8 across all three roads.

Across the country, improvements will include:

Designing new junctions and roundabouts

Improving signage and road markings

New road surfacing and landscape management

Improved pedestrian crossings and cycle lanes

The £38.3 million across England will deliver improvements on 17 roads, and comes on top of the £147.5m already invested to deliver life-saving improvements on 82 high risk roads across England. This round of funding is expected to save 385 lives over the next 20 years, as well as reduce congestion, improve journey times and lower emissions.

The Government is on the side of drivers and is delivering a wide range of improvements across all roads, through our £24bn Roads Investment Strategy, our 30-point Plan for Drivers and the biggest ever increase in funding for local road improvements thanks to £8.3bn of reallocated HS2 funding.

Transport Secretary Mark Harper said: “Britain’s roads are some of the safest in the world, but we are always looking at ways to help keep drivers and all road users safe.

“As part of the Government’s plan to improve roads across the country, we’re providing an extra £38 million so that local councils in England have the support they need to keep everyone safe, while reducing congestion and helping to grow the economy.”

According to the Road Safety Foundation, it is estimated that all tranches of the Safer Road Fund will save nearly 2600 fatal and serious injuries over the next 20 years.

Once the whole life costs are factored in for the schemes, the overall benefit cost ratio of the investment is estimated at 5.3, meaning for every £1 invested the societal benefit would be £5.30.

Dr Suzy Charman, Executive Director of RSF said: “The Safer Roads Fund is a transformational initiative for road safety and for the local authorities receiving funds. It makes it possible for road safety teams across the country to proactively address risk of death and serious injury for all road users on these routes.

“Systematic changes have already had a big impact on road death and serious injury, for example seatbelts and airbags protect lives when crashes happen.  In the same way we can design roads so that when crashes happen people can walk away, by clearing or protecting roadsides, putting in cross hatching to add space between vehicles, providing safer junctions like roundabouts or adding signalisation and/or turning pockets, and including facilities for walking and cycling.”

“We congratulate the Department for Transport on this lifesaving initiative and thank Ministers for their commitment to safer roads.”

Steve Gooding, Director, RAC Foundation said: “The Safer Roads Fund is the hugely welcome gift that keeps on giving, because today’s announcement means another 120 miles of safer road improvements will be delivered to the benefit of users. Such incremental improvements are key to achieving our collective aim for a safer road network as a whole.”

It also follows the actions government has already taken to improve road safety, including:

updating the Highway Code to introduce a hierarchy of road users, which places road users most at risk in the event of a collision at the top of the hierarchy

THINK! campaigns continue to target the most at risk groups, aiming to reduce the number of people killed and seriously injured on the roads of England and Wales

Project RADAR – A systematic investigation creating new opportunities to combine and compare data across government departments, arms-length bodies, and policing

Launched the largest real world randomised controlled trial of interventions to improve safety of learners and newly qualified drivers (Driver 2020)

The 17 roads receiving funding from the Safer Roads Fund Round 3 2023/4 tranche are:

A579, Bolton Council: £1.425 million

A676, Bolton Council: £1.025 million

A432, Bristol City Council: £2.275 million

A361, Devon County Council: £5.040 million

A690, Durham County Council: £2.940 million

A19, Doncaster City Council: £2.960 million

A19, North Yorkshire County Council: £2.960 million

A113, Essex County Council: £3.600 million

A6, Lancashire County Council: £4.540 million

A6, North Northamptonshire County Council: £2.200 million

A60, Nottingham City Council: £2.225 million

A6200, Nottingham City Council: £0.600 million

A420, Oxfordshire County Council: £2.225 million

A5191, Shropshire Council: £0.650 million

A2101, East Sussex County Council: £0.875 million

A583, Lancashire County Council: £1.497180 million

A41, Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council: £1.265 million