The Institution of Highways & Transportation is set to draw up detailed guidance on the proposed new ‘quality audits’ for checking the performance of new streets in design and safety terms. In response to the draft Manual for streets suggestion that road safety audits are scrapped and replaced with more broadly-based ‘quality audits’ which assess how well designs meet the objectives set, the IHT will this autumn launch a project to identify what this could entail. IHT director of technical affairs, John Smart, told Surveyor: ‘We hope to flesh out what the manual is saying, by providing detailed guidance for practioners.’ A crucial issue was its applicability. Safety audits were not usually carried out for residential streets in any event, ‘because this is not where the accidents occur’, he said. The road safety audit process has come under fire for stifling innovation by requiring schemes to adhere to the Design manual for roads and bridges, rather than simply identifying the potential risks of designs. Shared space champion and consultant Ben Hamilton-Baillie has claimed that every scheme he produces fails the auditing process ‘simply because they bring pedestrians and vehicles into greater conflict’ (Surveyor, 24 November 2005). But while Living Streets has welcomed the proposal for ‘quality audits’, policy officer Richard Hebditch expressed concerns over the potential complexity of the new procedure, which entails ascribing a number of risk factors for road safety and other factors, such as pedestrian amenity. The draft claims that the new system would ‘make it easier for decision-makers to strike an appropriate balance between any conflicts between the recommendations of a road safety audit and other considerations’. While Devon County Council’s procedure for separate ‘place audits’ and safety audits is seen as attractive by the team of consultants, lead by WSP, the system ‘still retains scope for disagreement and conflict at the end of the design process’.