Shapps’ safety probe on roads at US bases after Harry Dunn death

THE TRANSPORT Secretary has commissioned a review into road safety at US bases in the UK following the death of Harry Dunn.

In a letter to the teenager’s family, Grant Shapps said the Road Safety Foundation had been contracted to carry out the work, beginning with

RAF Croughton.

The Northamptonshire base has been at the centre of an international controversy since the US asserted diplomatic immunity for Anne Sacoolas after the death of 19- year- old Mr Dunn, inset, in a road crash in August last year.

Lawyers acting on behalf of 43- year- old Sacoolas said she had driven on the “wrong side of the road for 20 seconds” before the fatal crash.

The Transport Secretary has now instructed the safety foundation to conduct a review of the roads around all 10 US military bases in England.

The Transport Secretary told the Dunn family there would be inspections of a total of 83 miles of roads covering routes between RAF Croughton and nearby RAF Barford St John in Oxfordshire, with the work beginning this month. Under the review, the safety foundation has been contracted to examine videos of the routes in detail, rate the road and recommend safety measures that could lower the risk on the roads. Inspections will then expand to Cambridgeshire bases RAF Alconbury and RAF Molesworth, Suffolk bases RAF Lakenheath and RAF Mildenhall and Norfolk’s RAF Feltwell. The inspectors will complete their inquiries at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire and RAF Welford in Berkshire before finishing at RAF Menwith Hill, near Harrogate.

On behalf of the Dunn family, their spokesman Radd Seiger said: “We approached Grant Shapps to work with us on this project and met him and his team earlier this year.

“Their response was nothing short of fantastic and we are incredibly grateful to the Secretary of State for getting behind this campaign.

“He, like us, recognises the risks to life and limb in these road environments outside US bases and is approaching the review of road safety absolutely correctly.

“We are glad the Road Safety Foundation are taking the lead on the review and hope some good will come from it.”