Safer roads a priority as police M-way patrols unite

Jul 8 2008 by Liza Williams, Liverpool Daily Post

A GROUNDBREAKING collaboration on North West motorways is aiming to boost crime fighting and improve the response to traffic incidents.

Cheshire, Merseyside and Lancashire Police have joined with the Highways Agency to form the North West Motorway Police Group (NWMPG).

The NWMPG was officially launched yesterday and will bring a regional approach to motorway policing.

Supporters of the scheme say this will improve road safety and help in the battle against serious and organised crime.

Based in the Highways Agency’s state-of-the-art regional control centre at Newton-le-Willows, the NWMPG’s centrally located control room has been designed to ensure the best deployment of resources to incidents on the motorway network.

From yesterday, police control room staff taking and dealing with calls on the motorway network are working alongside Highways Agency control room staff who answer all calls from hard shoulder emergency telephone boxes, set electronic motorway signs, monitor motorway cameras and dispatch road traffic officers to incidents.

This arrangement frees up police patrols to focus on fighting crime and enforcement on the motorway network.

Cheshire Assistant Chief Constable David Baines is the lead officer on the collaboration and said becoming a regional group will help to save money by pooling resources. “This will free up officers and enable more intelligence-led policing of the motorways.

“It also means we can have more resources operating from more convenient positions, so that we spend less time on travelling through each other’s road areas to get to jobs.”

Motorway police officers will still work for their respective forces.

“The collaboration is all about softening the borders between the forces to allow motorway patrols to concentrate on denying criminals the use of the road, reducing the number of people killed or seriously injured and making people feel safer while they are using the motorway network.

“Motorway police work will become a lot more cross border and more intelligence led.

“In the past, Traffic Officers and the police might have turned up at the same incident.

“This collaboration enables traffic officers to attend more of the day-to-day incidents, reducing this duplication and letting the police focus on criminality on the roads.

“Officers throughout the three forces are also looking forward to the idea of working across borders, enabling them to tackle more serious crime by linking in with their colleagues in other Forces.”

Jamie Carr, regional operations manager in charge of the Traffic Officer Service, said: “The arrival of the NWMPG at the regional control centre is a vote of confidence in the Highways Agency’s North West Traffic Officer Service and the role it is playing keeping traffic moving across the region.

“This initiative will undoubtedly lead to better and faster decision-making to the benefit of motorway users.”

lizawilliams