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Road Safety Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 48:"After Clause 40, insert the following new clause—" ““SPECIAL FACILITIES FOR HIGHWAYS: DUTY TO PROTECT CHARACTER OF COUNTRYSIDE    After section 115 of the Highways Act 1980 (c. 66) insert— ““115L   SPECIAL FACILITIES FOR HIGHWAYS: DUTY TO PROTECT CHARACTER OF COUNTRYSIDE    In carrying out their duties under Part VII of this Act (provision of special facilities for highways), when providing special facilities intended to improve road safety, highways authorities shall have regard to the desirability of protecting the character of the countryside.”””” The noble Lord said: My Lords, the amendment would place a new duty on highway authorities to consider the effect of their policies and activities on the character of the countryside. It aims to improve the design of new interventions by those authorities in rural areas and to avoid clutter. Traffic levels have traditionally risen faster in rural areas than in our already congested towns and cities and are forecast to grow more. Accompanying that growth in traffic has been an increase in the number of fatalities on rural roads. Indeed, they have increased consecutively for the past four years. So authorities have an important role to play in matching the volume and speed of traffic.  However, frequently, that involves the installation of new warning signs, road markings and other traffic-calming measures. Those can have the effect of urbanising the countryside. As few authorities undertake audits to consider whether every warning sign or other piece of street furniture is still necessary, the result is an incremental increase in clutter. That is steadily eroding the character of the countryside. That is especially true in the case of temporary road signs relating to road works, which should come down but are left up for months after the roadworks have finished. Road safety and protection of the countryside are not opposite ends of the same spectrum. In many instances, rural communities are effectively presented with a choice between unsafe villages or the disfigurement of their village by treatment measures that pay little regard to the surrounding character of the countryside. To be concerned about the visual impact of road safety and other measures is not to argue that road safety measures are not vital for many rural communities. The key is to ensure that they are implemented in ways that are sympathetic to the surrounding countryside. There are examples of highway authorities who have tried to adopt a much more enlightened approach. I know of five county councils—Norfolk, Cumbria, Devon, Derbyshire and Wiltshire—all of whom have adopted sympathetic measures aimed at reducing the clutter in the countryside. None of those has come at the expense of road safety. If you double the number of road signs, you do not double the road safety that they create. Unfortunately, the initiatives undertaken by the five authorities that I mentioned are few in number and frequently restricted to protected areas, such as national parks or areas of outstanding natural beauty. The rural White Paper 2000 stated:"““we want local authorities to seek ways to enrich the countryside as a whole, not just in the protected areas, and maintain its distinctive local features””." It is appropriate, therefore, to place a national duty on local authorities to consider much more carefully the effect of their signing policy on the countryside. I would like local authorities and highway authorities themselves to consider the best way of doing it and of making it relevant to their own area. The amendment is not prescriptive of the method of implementation, although I hope very much that the Government would give some guidance and some support for it. I beg to move.