Catch me if you can! Citizen Speed Watchers helping the police in South Somerset

With limited resources available, driving offences in rural areas generally receive less police attention than on main trunk roads and motorways, despite the fact that a high proportion of accidents are on country roads.

The initiative aims at improving road safety through an inclusive, community-based and community-led approach. At the same time, the South Somerset Community Speed Watch initiative has the objective of improving partnership working with the police, fire and rescue services and various levels of local government (including Somerset County Council, South Somerset District Council and all relevant Town and Parish Councils within South Somerset).

Community Speed Watch gives local people the ability to get involved actively in road safety issues. The initiative started in the village of Ash in 2002, when a group of residents identified that there was a speeding problem. The police encouraged communities to help them deal with local speeding problems by reporting incidents proactively. However, this did not deliver any real change. Nothing much was achieved until South Somerset District Council became involved in 2004. Now this initiative has been so successful that it has gained national media acclaim. Indeed, many other areas are now attempting to replicate the scheme (e.g. see the Community Speedwatch Scheme in Wiltshire)

Teams of police-trained volunteers now monitor traffic passing through areas with speed limits, using radar or laser speed guns to identify those exceeding the limit. Citizen-led teams normally carry out two or more one hour long roadside watches per week and are being joined by police regularly. All equipment is provided at no direct cost to communities by the South Somerset Community Speed Watch Co-ordinators Group (funded by the Community Safety Partnership in the area).

Vehicles observed breaking the speed limit are reported to the police, who then advise the driver by letter on the first and second occasions they are reported that they need to drive more carefully in future.  On the third or subsequent occasions, they are contacted directly by the police, or other appropriate action is taken.

South Somerset District Council first became involved when dealing with complaints coming from some groups of citizen street watchers who were then operating in the area. The police had instigated the original programme but lacked adequate resources to meet the demands of the residents. In particular, citizens complained that the letters that needed to be sent to people reported for speeding were being processed too slowly. The Council proposed to make some funding available to the police to help out but this was declined as they had no staff internally to deliver it. The District Council then took the lead by funding a part time co-ordinator to deal with letter processing and support for the volunteers by training them in camera operation, etc.

This led to the development of a Community Speed Watch Steering Group, which in turn took ownership of the programme. The Community Safety Partnership, including the police, South Somerset District Council and members of the public, introduced a Code of Practice, so that speed watchers knew the operational criteria and standards that they had to keep to in carrying out their duties effectively. It also raised funds to support fully the development of existing and new groups. A referral system was set up and further police support was gained to tackle repeat offenders and those travelling at particularly excessive speeds.

A bespoke recording system was then developed by the community to record operational information. This soon developed into a strong management tool for identifying the effectiveness of groups and monitoring the actions of partners. It has proved valuable to put this information on the website, so that the teams can assess how effective they are and, in addition, they also have access to the database that holds the detailed records for individual teams and sites. This enables teams to assess performance and improve their own operation.

Given that fully co-ordinated support was now available for the volunteers, new groups were quickly formed in areas that were identified to have a problem, leading to the employment of a full time co-ordinator. A steady increase in operations has been experienced over the last five years, with over 15,000 educational letters being sent to motorists this year.

As a result of the partnership structures in the area, the Fire Service has now dedicated some resources to the programme to ensure that the letter processing is carried out, not only for all schemes in South Somerset but now also for those being developed across the rest of Somerset. There is a commitment from the Fire Service to quadruple the existing resource being put in by South Somerset District Council, in recognition of the dramatic effect the scheme is having on speeding drivers and the opportunity for further community development.

There are currently 35 CSW teams operating in South Somerset, who have observed a 40% reduction in vehicles exceeding the speed limit since monitoring began in July 2007.

It is possible to see from some of the National Indicators how community feeling has been affected by initiatives such as this. The following statistics show the 2008 figures for South Somerset (with the regional average for South West England in brackets).

NI 1 (the proportion of people who believe people from different backgrounds get on well together in their local area) - 75% (80%)

NI 2 (the proportion of people who feel they belong to their neighbourhood) - 64% (62%)

NI 5 (the level of overall satisfaction with the local area) - 87% (85%)NI 6 (the level of participation in regular volunteering) - 32% (28%)

Volunteer inputs: From 1st January 2009 - 1st January 2010 there was a total of 1510 community street watch sessions. With an average of 3 volunteers per one-hour session, this makes a total of 4,530 hours. As each session generates a report which takes about an additional hour (prepared by the volunteers), this gives a conservative estimate for the year of around 6040 person hours of input.

In addition, there are various meetings, training sessions, etc. Allowing for four meetings a year, with an average of 20 attendees for 2 hours, this gives an extra 160 person hours. Training takes about an hour, and 150 volunteers have been trained last year, making another 150 hours. This give a total of at least 6350 person hours during the year.

Staffing: South Somerset District Council, the local authority, provides direct administrative support of 0.8 full-time equivalent staff, plus management support of 0.2 full-time equivalent staff.

Other costs - SSDC contribute some office facilities but it has no other direct costs from the activity.

The community street watch steering group which has been set up has been successful in bidding and receiving funds from various sources of approximately £30,000.

First, community volunteers need co-ordinated support and committed sustained management, if they are to be effective and enthused.

Second, there is nothing more demoralising for an unpaid volunteer than to be let down by the agencies responsible for the service.

Click here to see the Community Speedwatch website of Avon and Somerset Police.