Cumbria Constabulary employs four traffic management officers.  One post holder is based in each of the three Policing areas with offices at Barrow, Whitehaven and Penrith.  These provide single point of contact between the police and all agencies involved with the county road network.  

The fourth officer is based with the Operational Support department at force headquarters and is liaison officer to the Highways Agency for motorway and trunk road issues.  This post holder also deals with a number of policy matters on behalf of the force and attends regional meetings and oversees any PFI routes in the county.

The major roles of the traffic management officers are:

• Collation and evaluation of collision data including quality assurance checking of information.
• Consultation and participation in road safety audits for council and HA schemes
• Trained examiners of street works activities
• Administrative support to the three Area CRASH (Casualty Reduction and Safer Highways) meetings on behalf of the Safer Roads Partnership including the provision of monthly updating of collision information and trends.  This position acting as the main liaison contact point for all members of the groups.
• Identification of collision/casualty  trends and hotspots
• Preparation of tasking packages for both police and partnership use
• Participate in the Safer Roads sub groups  (Information and Publicity)
• As a Partner in the group provide detailed data for the preparation of the counties annual road safety statement.
• Liaison with the Safety camera partnership on all aspects of collisions and traffic data unit collection and analysis to identify with their analyst new or emerging safety camera sites.
• Provide a focal point for police road safety issues to be raised within the partnership and/or directly to highway engineers (in respect of immediate safety issues reported).
• Information response source for Freedom of Information requests concerning road statistics etc.
• Preparation and participation in road safety talks and lectures.
• Attendance at local neighbourhood forums/parish meetings etc as required.     

The traffic management officers of the force have been part of the main meetings of the Safer Roads for Cumbria partnership for some time and have been the source of information on collision trends and appropriate targets.  However since the re-structuring of the main partnership into an Executive, three sub groups and three area CRASH meetings, traffic management staff have greatly increased their partnership activities.

Members of the team, attend both "information" and "publicity" sub groups as active participants, bringing to the meetings updated information with suggestions on its potential for use.  This is more particularly seen in the Information sub group where the team are able, at a very early stage, to detect emerging or changing issues in relation to casualties and road collisions.  It is now common practice to prepare specific briefing papers for discussion by this sub-committee to develop or influence future tasking and targeting.  Members work very closely with the chairman on these issues as he represents the decisions and proposals of the group to the main quarterly "Executive" meetings where good and informative briefing papers can lead to effective future working practices.

However, the team's most comprehensive partnership working is in their role as CRASH group administrators and while playing a leading part in the preparation of papers for the monthly meetings, their effectiveness relies on the good co-operation of all members for the supply of information supplies.  There is now a clear and easy flow of information forged between partners allowing for detailed assessments of issues to be made by the meetings.

Involvement in the CRASH & sub-committees has led each traffic management office to develop effective networking between agencies, with all staff being on as it were 'first name' terms with their opposite numbers.  This has allowed for some very proactive working between agencies on all manner of subjects and maintains an effective communication link between them all.