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Merseyside Police: failure of public engagement: a case history
There are many examples of Merseyside Police failing to engage with the public over road safety. The following case history is one.

In 2012, Wirral Pedestrians Association put forward some proposals to tackle pavement parking. Members of the Association were (and still are) very concerned about the risks to pedestrians.

A 10-point plan [1] was produced and sent to relevant people and organisations including the Merseyside Police Chief Constable. The hope was that organisations would engage and respond to each proposal either by adopting it or by giving a reasoned explanation of why the proposal would not be adopted.

However, Merseyside Police made no genuine response to the proposals - there was an initial acknowledgement from the then Assistant Chief Constable, Andrew Cooke (now Chief Constable), and then a written response from the Wirral Area Commander in which he merely typed out a passage from a Wirral Council report that the Pedestrians Association was already aware of [2].

Since this failure of engagement by Merseyside Police and other agencies, the problem has got worse and the fears of Wirral Pedestrians were confirmed by the death of a 4-year-old child, killed in 2016 in Neston by a Wallasey driver parking illegally on a pavement [3].

It has to be concluded that the failure of public engagement by Merseyside Police contributed to the death of the child.

References

[1] Wirral Pedestrians (2012) A Strategy to Tackle Illegal Parking on Pavements Proposals From Wirral Pedestrians Association http://www.wirralpedestrians.org.uk/files/wpa_pavement_parking_proposals.pdf
[2] Wirral Pedestrians Association website http://www.wirralpedestrians.org.uk/pavement_parking.html
[3] http://www.wirralpedestrians.org.uk/files/echo_article_on_esme_weir.pdf





Last updated: 12 Jan 2020