Wiltshire Council awarded £7m to improve safety on the A3102

Wiltshire Council has been granted nearly £7m to help us make the A3102 in Wiltshire safer for road users.

The Department for Transport's Safer Roads Fund was set up to support safety improvements to the 50 highest risk local A-road sections in England. The road sections were identified using traffic flow and accident data, which were assessed by the Road Safety Foundation (RSF) to establish an overall risk rating.

The A3102, between J16 of the M4 near Swindon to the A350 in Melksham, via Royal Wootton Bassett and Calne, was identified through this process, and the council has been awarded £6.98m.

Cllr Caroline Thomas, Cabinet Member for Transport, said: We're delighted to have been awarded nearly £7m from the Department for Transport's Safer Roads Fund to improve the safety on the A3102 from the M4 to the A350 at Melksham.

The money will be spent on a range of safety measures, such as improving signage and road markings, and redesigning some junctions.

In our Business Plan we set out our priorities to have well-connected communities that are safe, and this funding, which will improve reduce journey times and emissions as well as safety on the A3102, will help us to meet a number of related goals.

We are now working on the specific details to establish the most effective way to use the funding to reduce the risk of collisions, and we'll have more information on this soon.

The Safer Roads Fund has seen £100m committed nationally to improve road safety and, together, the schemes are set to prevent around 1,450 fatal and serious injuries over the next 20 years. The latest £47.5m investment programme should prevent around 760 fatal and serious injuries over the next 20 years, with a financial benefit to society of £420m, in addition to saving much heartache to friends and families that would have been affected, according to Road Safety Foundation analysis.