- All speed and red light camera fines are paid into an agency special purpose account held by Main Roads WA called the Road Trauma Trust Account (the Account).
- The Account is not a stand-alone account and can be accessed without the Road Safety Council’s or the Office of Road Safety’s approval or control. This creates a risk that Account funds could be applied to projects or activities other than those approved for funding. However, we found no evidence that funds had been accessed for unapproved projects or used inappropriately. While Main Roads WA’s management processes are designed to prevent this from happening, stronger controls are warranted given the increase in funds paid into the Account since 2011.
- A lack of policy and clear role definition for the Office of Road Safety as the Account administrator reduces its authority to require funding recipients to provide effective acquittal of project funding. One in five progress reports were not submitted despite the Office of Road Safety’s attempts to gain compliance. Where these were submitted, most contained limited information about progress other than money spent.
- Eighty-three per cent of project files held by the Office of Road Safety did not include executed agreements. In all but one of these files, the Office of Road Safety itself or Main Roads WA were the fund recipients.
- The Road Safety Council cannot demonstrate that it has an effective process for making recommendations to maximise the chance of achieving the State’s road safety goals. This is because the Council has no master action plan for the strategy as a whole, and no rigorous or transparent process for choosing the project proposals it recommends. Rigour and transparency are needed to manage the risk of real or perceived conflicts of interest among Council members who both recommend and receive funding from the Account.
- The Road Safety Council is not adequately addressing its legislative responsibility to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of road safety measures. This is because project reporting is patchy and often contains too little information to enable the Council and Office of Road Safety to evaluate project performance and inform future recommendations.
- In August 2012, the Road Safety Council adopted a performance monitoring framework comprising measures for outcomes, outputs (activities), road system risk and changes in risk resulting from broader economic and social change. This could be used to assess the strategy’s progress and inform planning priorities. While this is a step in the right direction, it is not a master action plan for implementing Towards Zero.