Road Safety Bill [HL]

Within this group I shall address Amendment No. 80, which seeks to place a duty on local authorities to produce an annual report on speed limits. Speed—whether excess speed; breaking the posted speed   limit, or unwise speed; driving too fast for the conditions—is a contributory factor in one in three road accidents. It is an even greater contributor to fatal accidents. For that reason, both the Department for Transport and local authorities have been undertaking advertising and educational campaigns, most notably under the ““speed kills”” heading, to persuade drivers to change their behaviour. Local authorities are responsible for about 96 per cent of road lengths in England. It is their responsibility to consider the setting of sensible speed limits on their roads, bearing in mind the guidance from the department set out in the soon-to-be revised circular. Amendment No. 80 would place a duty on local authorities to report on the setting of speed limits on those roads for which they currently have responsibility. It would require them to look at the limits currently on those roads and whether they should be changed in any way. It would be a further encouragement to local authorities therefore to adopt a strategic approach to the setting of limits. The Minister may say that local authorities already undertake this kind of analysis. That is certainly true. What does not seem to be the case, however, is the requirement to provide information for central government to enable the department to monitor the development of lower speed roads and see the effect of these on casualty reduction. I hope, therefore, that the Minister will give a positive response to this amendment to persuade local highway authorities to take further action to reduce speeds on their roads.