THE roads of Worcestershire could soon be a safer place thanks to a new organisation set up to tackle highways issues.

The new Safer Roads Partnership in West Mercia was formed on April 1, and will take over the previous Safety Camera Partnership's operations.

It will also work with other agencies in developing ways to reduce the number of injuries and deaths on the roads and promote road safety.

Initially, the main focus will be to build on the work done by its predecessor across the region, but in the longer-term it will be working more closely with its members to work out what the main road safety issues are and find ways to deal with them.

This will include building stronger links with local council road safety teams to tackle specific problems by working together on a range of projects and campaigns.

The new partnership has made it clear that speed cameras will continue to be visible and conspicuous, at locations which have been selected mainly because of the numbers of injuries at the scene caused by unnecessary and avoidable car accidents.

Partnership manager Trevor McAvoy said: "These are exciting times for us and we are looking forward to being a part of a wider road safety partnership."

He said in the past, the Government had restricted the work to enforcing speed limits but now there was a broader road safety remit.

"The partnership will continue to be data-led and operationally targeted, with the local highways authorities now having a new higher profile in guiding and funding our work," he said.

"As before, we will be operating to agreed guidelines because we believe that is the right and proper way, which has proved so successful in the past."