Camden Council has introduced spot checks on contractors’ vehicles working on its sites to ensure they meet strict safety standards and do not pose a risk to vulnerable road users.
The checks mean that any contractor working for the council must meet a minimum level of work-related road risk standards (WRRR). These include:
- Accreditation to at least Fors (or equivalent) bronze level, to demonstrate legal compliance;
- Driver training relating to vulnerable road users and the challenges of driving in an urban environment;
- Ensuring vehicles are fitted with additional safety features to reduce the blind spots that are present on most large vehicles, reducing the chance of a collision;
- Driver licence checks and collision reporting and analysis.
To ensure the standards are followed, a monitoring and enforcement procedure has been developed, which incorporates spot safety checks of contractors’ vehicles. Where any issues are identified, the contractor is obliged to rectify the issue within a set period of time.
Camden’s own vehicle fleet is compliant with the WRRR standard and has achieved Fors silver accreditation. It is also currently working towards achieving gold accreditation.
The council is also a champion of the Clocs standard, which is now a planning requirement for all private developments in the borough, as well as a requirement for its own construction projects.
Councillor Phil Jones, cabinet member for regeneration, transport & planning, said: “In Camden, we take a proactive role in improving the safety of large vehicles travelling through our borough and London.
“We have also used the opportunity to introduce changes to our procurement practices to include stringent road safety requirements, as well as via our planning process to ensure safer vehicle operation on construction projects in the borough.
“This means we are the first borough to monitor and spot check compliance for safety equipment on large vehicles as well as driver training and accreditation.”