03/02/2005 10:14:17 Beardsells office relocation Because of sustained growth within the partnership it has made the problem of space more apparent. Relocation has now taken place and we are settling into our prestigious new offices. Prominently located in Cheadle Village Centre, our characterful three-storey office building is situated on Eden Place, just off High Street. Cheadle itself is located just seven miles south of Manchester City Centre and within minutes of the M60 and M56 motorways. Manchester Airport is within ten minutes drive. The building has been refurbished to provide high quality working environment. 03/02/2005 09:58:00 Road deaths on the increase Road deaths are rising in many parts of the country, despite the Government’s announcement yesterday that it was meeting all its road safety targets. Figures from 19 police forces, compiled by the lobby group SafeSpeed, show a 5 per cent increase in the annual death rate last year, the sharpest rise for 15 years. The survey calls into question the Government’s road safety strategy, which has concentrated on increasing the number of speed cameras while allowing forces to re- deploy hundreds of traffic police to other duties. Ministers have attempted to deflect attention from their failure to reduce the death rate by focusing on the fall in the number of serious injuries in road crashes. But a leaked letter from David Jamieson, the Transport Minister, to the Government’s panel of road safety advisers discloses the degree of concern over the death rate. Mr Jamieson writes: “I would like to make the levelling off in fatalities a particular area of focus for the panel.” Mr Jamieson said that one of the main reasons why the death rate had stuck at about 3,400 for the past five years was the increasing popularity of high-performance motorcycles. Almost a fifth of all the people who died on the roads in 2002 were motorcyclists. The largest proportion of these were “born-again bikers”, men in their 30s and 40s riding machines of more than 500cc. A national strategy on reducing motorcycle deaths is to be announced in the autumn. In 19 force areas, deaths have risen from 1,270 to 1,337, with men aged between 20 and 24 accounting for almost 20 per cent of the male fatalities from 2000 to 2002. Road deaths reached a post-war peak of 7,985 in 1966 and then declined steadily to 3,421 in 1998. Unlike the overall death rate, the number of pedestrian deaths has continued to fall, from 906 in 1998 to 775 in 2002. The greatest improvement in casualty rates was among pedal cyclists, with the number killed or seriously injured falling by 40 per cent since 1998.