Guidance on local authority child safety audits

The term Child Safety Audit was first coined in the Department's Road Safety Strategy, Tomorrow's Roads - Safer for Everyone. The strategy asks local authorities to carry out such audits. Some authorities have been unclear about exactly what is required of them. This is intended to provide guidance on the procedures to be followed by local authorities.

First, it is not to be confused with Road Safety Audit, which is an engineering audit carried out for most major highway newbuild and improvement schemes, to ensure at different stages that scheme implementation is consistent with specification requirements and does not build hazards into projects. Fundamentally, Child Safety Audit is about knowing the child road safety problems within an authority's area, implementing strategies to deal with those problems, and subsequently measuring success (scheme experience, where appropriate, can contribute to the MOLASSES (Monitoring Of Local Authority Safety Schemes database). The data to be collected should include location, severity of the casualty (killed, seriously injured, slightly injured), road user type, age and sex. These are all factors which might influence the nature of the treatment to be adopted.

A comprehensive Child Road Safety Audit will not be limited to this basic information, which should be regarded as a minimum. Careful analysis of the data can identify key groups to be targeted - for example, child car passengers or teenage male cyclists. In some authorities, analysis at ward level, or another geographical area, can also point out links between casualties and social deprivation. Joint authority working may sometimes be helpful in analysis of these relatively small numbers.

Other relevant information includes:

• the total number of school crossing patrol sites, with the percentage staffed (permanent or relief) and the percentage vacant for more than six months.
• the total number of primary and secondary schools and the percentage of each that have Transport Plans or Policies, together with the total number of School Travel Plans and plans to increase their number.
• the total numbers of primary and secondary schools with 'Safer Routes to School' schemes implemented together with the absolute number of 'Safer Routes to School' and plans to increase their number.
• estimates of the percentage year on year increases in numbers of children walking to school and cycling to school; the percentage decrease in parents driving their children to school; the percentage increase in bus usage by pupils and students; the percentage increase in the number of school bus routes. These might be obtained in the context of the evaluation of the Safe Routes to School schemes and their impact on casualties.
• plans to increase the number of 20mph zones.
• plans to improve pedestrian and cycle networks for children.
• a description of the policy, if any, that residential developments should have a 10 or 20 mph maximum speed limit.

March 2003