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Road Safety Bill [HL]

I am grateful to my noble friend for the way in which he has introduced the amendment. I can give him the assurances he requires. He will recognise that local authorities are accountable in a number of ways. Local highway authorities in England are already required to prepare and submit five-year local transport plans. These include a road safety strategy in which each authority must set out its overall approach to delivering road safety in its area. The road safety strategy should articulate the road safety situation in an authority’s area and demonstrate how a range of interventions can address the casualty problem. The strategy should show how the needs of all road users—occupants of motor vehicles, motorcyclists, pedestrians and cyclists—are to be addressed. Each local highway authority is also required to set targets for casualty reduction in its local area. The Department for Transport’s guidance on local transport plans for the period 2006–11 now requires highway authorities to produce and publish a speed management strategy, which I know my noble friend will approve of, as part of their overall approach to delivering road safety in their area. Ultimately, it is for local highway authorities to determine how they deliver road safety in their local areas. They already provide the department with a great deal of the information sought by my noble friend’s amendments. It is not the department’s place to be overly prescriptive about the way in which authorities operate, but I hope I have given my friend the assurances which he sought.