Andrew Dickerson and Paul West have been reappointed as members to the Prison Service Pay Review Body (PSPRB) for 3 years from 1 August 2019 to 31 July 2022.

Andrew is an academic Labour Market Economist. He has been Professor of Economics at the University of Sheffield since 2006, and was the Head of Department from 2011 to 2015. He is also an honorary fellow at the Institute for Employment Studies, and was previously a visiting fellow for UK Commission for Employment and Skills.

Paul is currently the Managing Director of Policing First Limited. He has 32 years of policing experience, including 13 years as a chief officer and 8 years as the Chief Constable of West Mercia Police. In 2011 he was joint Director of the Indian Police Service Mid-Career Training Programme Phase IV, based at the National Police Academy in Hyderabad, India. He has been the Bishop of Worcester’s Criminal Justice Affairs advisor since 2012. He was previously a member and Vice-Chair of the Board of Governors of the University of Worcester where he also chaired the Board’s Personnel Committee and was a member of its Remuneration Committee.

PSPRB provides the government with independent advice on the remuneration of operational prison staff in the England and Wales, and Northern Ireland Prison Services.

Public appointments to PSPRB are made by the Prime Minister on the recommendation of the Justice Secretary in consultation with Northern Ireland.

Reappointments to PSPRB are regulated by the Commissioner for Public Appointments. These re-appointments have been made in line with the Cabinet Office’s Governance Code on Public Appointments, which governs the appointments process.

Andrew Dickerson and Paul West have not declared any political activity.

Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick MP has today (12 March 2020) set out proposals to bring Britain’s planning system into the 21st century as part of plans to get the country building.

Councils will be encouraged to take a more innovative approach to home building – by ensuring redevelopment of high streets is housing-led, building upwards and above and around stations.

Next month the government will launch a register of brownfield sites which will map out unused land as part of plans to encourage councils to make the most of this land first – backed by £400 million to bring this mostly unused land back to use. 

Developers will be able to demolish vacant commercial, industrial and residential buildings and replace them with well-designed homes without getting delayed in a lengthy planning process, under new plans being consulted on by the government, meaning that more homes will be able to be delivered more quickly.

The government will also review how places assess how many homes are needed in their area and incentivise those that deliver on those numbers.

All local authorities will also be required to have up-to-date Local Plans in place by December 2023, or see government intervention, so enough homes are built for their communities.  

The changes come ahead of plans for an ambitious planning white paper – set to radically reform the planning system by speeding up the decision-making process so homes can be built quicker where they are needed the most.

Good design and place-making will be at the heart of the new system, championing tree-lined streets, a “fast track for beauty” and a commitment to lower carbon emissions in all new homes – for a green revolution in housebuilding.  

Housing Secretary Rt Hon Robert Jenrick MP said:

I want everyone, no matter where they live, to have access to affordable, safe, quality housing and live in communities with a real sense of place – as part of our mission to level up, unite and unleash the potential of this country.

We must think boldly and creatively about the planning system to make it fit for the future, and this is just the first step, so we can deliver the homes communities need and help more young people onto the ladder.

This follows a package of measures announced in yesterday’s Budget to help more people onto the housing ladder by building more affordable homes and speeding up the planning process to deliver the 300,000 homes a year the country needs.

There will be more help for those that want to build their own home and for parish councils and neighbourhood forums wanting to build a small number of homes that will allow their community to grow.

A further £1 billion will be made available to help unlock almost 70,000 new homes and create a new £10 billion Single Housing Infrastructure Fund to give confidence to communities, local authorities and developers that the infrastructure they want will be delivered before the building starts. 

This follows the announcement of £12 billion of investment to build more affordable homes – the biggest cash investment in affordable housing for a decade. With the ability to also bring in around £38 billion of further private and public investment. 

This new Affordable Homes Programme will deliver more affordable housing, helping more people to own their own home through the government’s home ownership programmes such as Right to Shared Ownership.

It will also help to build more social rent homes – supporting those most at risk of homelessness.

To secure a fairer deal for those who are renting the government will abolish “no fault” evictions through the Renters Reform Bill and bring forward the social housing white paper to ensure residents in social homes are treated with dignity and respect.

In order to help ensure the homes that people are living in are safe, £1 billion of grant funding to tackle unsafe cladding systems on high-rise residential buildings over 18 million in both the private and social sectors has also been announced. 

The grant funding is in addition to the £600 million already available, as the government introduces a new Building Safety Bill to bring about the biggest changes to building safety in a generation.

An extra £145 million, on top of the £236 million allocated at the end of February, will be used to offer ‘move on’ accommodation for up to 6,000 rough sleepers and those at immediate risk of rough sleeping.

In addition, a further £262 million will be used to expand drug and alcohol treatment services for vulnerable people sleeping rough – ensuring every area in the country receives additional funding for these vital services.

An action plan to ensure smart motorways are as safe as possible has been set out today (12 March 2020) by Transport Secretary Grant Shapps.    Work will focus on getting help to broken down drivers much quicker and making the schemes less confusing.

This follows analysis commissioned by the Transport Secretary which found that overall, evidence shows that in most ways smart motorways are as safe as, or safer than, conventional ones. Data shows that the risks that are lower on smart motorways compared with conventional motorways include tailgating, rapid changes of vehicle speeds, vehicles drifting off the carriageway and vehicles being driven too fast.

However, some risks are higher than on conventional motorways, for example the risk of a collision between a moving and stationary vehicle.

In order to address these risks the Transport Secretary has unveiled a package of 18 measures, which includes abolishing confusing ‘dynamic hard shoulder’ motorways and substantially speeding up the deployment of ‘stopped vehicle detection’ – a radar-based system which spots stationary vehicles – so that it is installed across the entire smart motorway network within 36 months.

This will enable broken down drivers to typically be detected within 20 seconds, with lanes closed more quickly.

Grant Shapps, Secretary of State for Transport, said:

I’ve been greatly concerned by a number of deaths on smart motorways, and moved by the accounts of families who’ve lost loved ones in these tragic incidents.

I commissioned an urgent stocktake of smart motorways to provide a clearer picture of their safety and make recommendations on next steps. I envisaged it to be swift, but during the course of our investigations a complex picture emerged – which warranted further work.

That work has now concluded and overall, evidence shows that in most ways smart motorways are as safe as or safer than conventional ones.

But I am clear that there is more we can do to raise the bar on smart motorway safety. The extended package of measures I have set out will help rebuild public confidence in our motorway network and ensure that safety is firmly at the heart of the programme.

The changes will also ensure that the distance between places to stop in an emergency is reduced to three-quarters of a mile where feasible, so that on future schemes motorists should typically reach one every 45 seconds at 60mph. The maximum spacing will be one mile.

The action plan also sets out the government’s commitment to installing 10 additional emergency areas on the existing M25 smart motorway and considering a national programme to install more places to stop where they are more than a mile apart. Highways England will also investigate what more can be done on sections of the M6 and M1 where there have been clusters of incidents.

There will also be more communication with drivers to ensure motorists feel as safe as possible on smart motorways. An additional £5 million is being committed on national, targeted communications campaigns to further increase drivers’ awareness and understanding of smart motorways and how to use them confidently.

The campaign will launch later this year and include advice on what to do if drivers break down on a smart motorway.

Jim O’Sullivan, Highways England Chief Executive, said:

Every death in any road accident is tragic, and we are determined to do all we can to make our roads as safe as possible. We will be taking forward the measures the Secretary of State for Transport has set out, and we will be improving further our information to drivers to help them be safer on all of our roads, including our smart motorway network.

General enquiries

Members of the public should contact the Highways England customer contact centre on 0300 123 5000.

Media enquiries

Journalists should contact the Highways England press office on 0844 693 1448 and use the menu to speak to the most appropriate press officer.

Following concerns about smart motorway safety, I asked my department to review the evidence and, if needed, bring forward recommendations. Today (12 March 2020) I am publishing that work and taking the action necessary to ensure our roads are as safe as they can be.

Overall, what the evidence shows is that in most ways, smart motorways are as safe as, or safer than, the conventional ones. But not in every way. To ensure we are doing all we can do to improve safety, I am publishing a package of 18 measures. This will allow us to retain the benefits of smart motorways while addressing the concerns that have been identified.

Smart motorways have helped us cope with a 23 percent rise in traffic since 2000. They save motorists thousands of hours sitting in jams. They reduce the disruption and environmental destruction which would otherwise be needed to widen our busiest roads.

Their growth, however, has not always been well explained, there is not uniformity, and concerns exist over safety.

As part of our work we listened to the families who’ve campaigned on this issue, and I want to pay tribute to them. I’m also grateful to colleagues and groups like the AA and RAC who have pursued this issue and helped us reach this outcome.

Alongside the report, and annexed to it, which will be published on GOV.UK, therefore, I am launching an extended package of measures – an action plan – to raise the bar on smart motorway safety.

It will include:

• abolishing the confusing “dynamic hard shoulder” smart motorways, where the hard shoulder operates only part-time and is a live running lane the rest of the time
• substantially speeding up the deployment of “stopped vehicle detection” technology across the entire “all lane running” smart motorway network, so stopped vehicles can be detected and the lanes closed more quickly. Highways England is to accelerate its plans and install the technology within the next 36 months, setting a clear public timetable for the first time
• faster attendance by more Highways England traffic officer patrols on smart motorways where the existing spacing between places to stop in an emergency is more than one mile, with the aim of reducing the attendance time from an average of 17 minutes to 10 minutes
• reducing the distance between places to stop in an emergency to three quarters of a mile where feasible so that on future schemes motorists should typically reach one every 45 seconds at 60mph. The maximum spacing will be 1 mile
• installing 10 additional emergency areas on the existing M25 smart motorways on the section of smart motorway with a higher rate of live lane stops and where places to stop in an emergency are furthest apart
• considering a national programme to install more emergency areas where places to stop in an emergency are more than one mile apart
• investigating M6 Bromford viaduct and the M1 at Luton, Sheffield and Wakefield where there is evidence of clusters of incidents. Where an intervention is considered likely to make a difference, we will look to make changes at these locations
• making emergency areas more visible – all emergency areas will have a bright orange road surface, dotted lines on the surfacing showing where to stop, better and more frequent signs on approach and signs inside giving information on what to do in an emergency. These will be installed by the end of spring 2020
• more traffic signs giving the distance to the next place to stop in an emergency, so you will almost always be able to see a sign. Typically, these will be between approximately 330 and 440 yards apart
• more communication with drivers. We recognise that we could do more therefore we are committing to an additional £5m on national targeted communications campaigns to further increase awareness and understanding of smart motorways, how they work and how to use them confidently
• displaying ‘report of obstruction’ messages automatically on electronic signs, triggered by the stopped vehicle detection system, to warn drivers of a stopped vehicle ahead, this is currently being trialled on the M25 and then a further trial on the M3
• places to stop in an emergency shown on your satnav by working with satnav providers to ensure the locations are shown on the screen, when needed
• making it easier to call for help if broken down by working with car manufacturers to improve awareness of the use of the eCall ‘SOS’ button in newer cars to call for help
• we have changed the law to enable automatic detection of ‘red X’ violations and enforcement using cameras and we will be expanding the upgrade of smart motorway cameras (HADECS) to identify more of those who currently ignore the ‘red X’. The penalty is 3 points on the driver’s licence and a £100 fine, or the driver can be referred to an awareness course
• an update of the Highway Code to provide more guidance
• closer working with the recovery industry on training and procedures
• reviewing existing emergency areas where the width is less than the current 15 foot wide standard. If feasible and appropriate we will widen to this standard
• a review of the use of red flashing lights to commence immediately. We have listened to the calls for recovery vehicles to be allowed to use red flashing lights. We will commence work immediately on a review.

My point on communication with drivers is important. Motorists could be better informed about this change in our motorways. Many do not know exactly what a smart motorway is, and are not aware of when they are on one or not. We need to tackle the public perception of, and public confidence in, the safety of smart motorways as much as the reality.

By these measures we ensure safety is at the heart of our smart motorway programme and assure public confidence in the motorway network. We will continue to monitor the data and work with campaigners to ensure that improvements are delivered.

A copy of the report has been placed in the Library of the House.