New Roads Policing Unit based in Grantham and Louth launched to try to keep people safe on Lincolnshire’s roads

A dedicated team of officers has been launched to proactively patrol our roads in a bid to make them safer.

Lincolnshire Police's new Roads Policing Unit (RPU) has launched today (Wednesday) with the aim of reducing serious and fatal collisions, promote road safety, and to target criminals who use our road network to commit crime.

The team will be based in Grantham and Louth - with the force saying this will help provide effective coverage of the entire county and help other teams across the force.

Now comprising of two sergeants and 18 constables, the first officers on the team started at Grantham in January, with the Louth base opening today.

The unit has four key objectives:

• a sustainable reduction in the number of people killed or seriously injured in road collisions
• to have the safest roads in the UK
• to make Lincolnshire's roads a hostile environment for criminals
• to reduce the risk to road users through education, engagement and enforcement.

In this past 12 months in the Boston and South Holland police area there have been 386 people harmed in collisions on our roads.

Those incidents led to nine deaths, 81 serious injuries and 296 'slight injuries'.

Since beginning work in Grantham, officers say the RPU has delivered 'impressive results' - handling more than 300 traffic offence reports and making more than 40 arrests.

The team will be deployed to any serious collision in the county - with bosses saying this will release response and neighbourhood officers to focus on incidents that are a priority in their communities.

Chief inspector Pat Coates, Specialist Operations, said: “Our new Roads Policing Unit is vital in keeping people safe on Lincolnshire’s roads because they will bring a new focus on keeping road users safe from harm. Every serious collision we attend is a life changing event for those involved.

"By engaging with road users, educating, and enforcing road traffic legislation, we aim to reduce the number of people who have their lives potentially devastated by a road traffic collision.

“The team will support the work of their colleagues across the county in targetting criminals, removing opportunities for them to travel, and committing crime in our communities.

“By targetting drivers who are disqualified, drive without a licence or insurance, drive with defective vehicles, drivers who are unfit through drink or drugs, steal vehicles and those whose sole purpose is to commit crime, we aim to remove those offenders who cause the biggest threat on our roads."

All the RPU officers will be trained to advanced driving standards, tactical pursuits and containment (TPAC), specialist traffic law, including HGVs, prohibition of vehicles and, the carriage of dangerous goods.

Some of the officers already bring years of experience in road traffic legislation, and its is hoped that the additional training will enable everyone in the team to effectively tackle issues that cause harm on our roads.

Police and crime commissioner Marc Jones said: “The Roads Policing Unit will reinforce efforts to reduce the number of serious and fatal collision – as well as targetting offenders who use our roads to travel into the county to commit crime.

“The chief constable and I listen carefully to our communities, when asked, road safety is one area that always comes high on the list of priorities. This new team will enhance the work already being done to keep communities and residents safe in the county.”

Officers will have a mix of marked and plain cars and bikes to patrol and will be tasked during their time on patrol using analytical data and will carry out intelligence-led patrols to achieve the aims of the Roads Policing Plan.

Chief constable, Chris Haward, said: “The new team transform our roads policing capacity. Road safety is of the utmost importance to the people of Lincolnshire and also to those who visit. Our aim is to make this county the safest place to live, work and visit.

"Addressing the dangers that are inherent around road use by dedicating officers to this role will, I hope, have swift and meaningful results. Not only that, but by making sure that our RPU officers are the first port of call for anything relating to incidents on our roads frees up other officers to be able to deal with other priorities affecting our communities.”

Mr Jones added: “Having this proper, dedicated capability on our roads really does make a huge difference, both in reducing fatalities and serious injuries on our roads, but also in keeping criminals out of our county.

“Ultimately, our roads are the way our criminals access our communities so, by focussing on them, denying criminals the use of our roads, it’s key to preventing crime, particularly in rural areas but not exclusively. We know a lot of crime that happens in Lincolnshire are people coming from out of county to prey on our communities and we’re determined to get that under control and grip it.

“There's no crime in Lincolnshire that sadly kills as many people as incidents on our roads. We all set out on a journey in the morning to get to work to get to school, whatever we are going to do, and we have a full expectation, quite rightly, that we’ll go home again to our loved ones.

"We all need to work together as a community, especially the police, to help make that community.

"The RPU will be a really good back-up for our regular officers that we already see in our communities. It’s a really good part of our system, it’s good value for money, and it’s a direct result of what council taxpayers told us they wanted to happen in last year’s consultation, so we’ve listened, responded and delivered.”