Surrey Police’s Vanguard Road Safety Team has been named the first ever Team of the Year at the Surrey Police Federation Recognition Awards.

The Vanguard Road Safety Team (VRST) was launched in October 2022, with the mission of reducing road deaths and serious injury collisions. It has produced excellent results, including halving the number of fatal collisions in Surrey due to drink/drug driving over the Christmas period.

The team targets suspects based on intelligence, and conducts operations aimed at identifying offenders, gathering best evidence and seeing the case through the criminal justice process. The team works long hours, often with short-notice shift changes.

In 2023, they issued over 1,100 traffic offence reports for ‘Fatal 5’ offences (speeding; drink or drug driving; careless driving; distracted driving; and not wearing a seatbelt), arrested over 276 people, seized over 300 vehicles, and issued over 235 summons reports.

This was achieved by a small team of two Sergeants and eight PCs that cover the entire force area. They are: Sgt Dan Pascoe, Sgt Trevor Hughes, PC Sam Talbut-Smith, PC Cameron Irving, PC Richard Sadler, PC Paul Church, PC Dave Curran, PC Steve Elkin, PC Gary Glue and PC Steve Bishop (who has recently retired). They are supported by police staff member, researcher Chris Ward.

The VRST also took ownership of Op Tramline, a road safety campaign led by National Highways, which uses an unmarked lorry to detect, record and capture distracted drivers. Since they took this on, Surrey has become the highest-performing force in the country for this Op by a significant margin. The hard work of the team has also helped prevent fatal collisions in Surrey.

Sgt Pascoe said: “We launched as a result of additional funding via the PCC for an uplift in officers, so we got 10 officers for VRST. There was an increasing number of fatal and very serious injury collisions in Surrey and we identified that there was a gap in the response that roads policing was able to provide.

“Because roads policing is so busy, we would have the intel come in, but ensuring that there was a unit to be able to go and act on that intelligence was the real challenge, because we’d get to the site but then be turned away to respond to an incident.

“That’s where the VRST fits in, and we also support neighbourhood policing through any problems they have with prolific driving offenders. We’re also the first team response for any planned car meets, which can get out of control.

“We appreciate that we're extremely lucky, because not every force has a proactive roads policing team. There’s a genuine drive from the people on the team – they applied to do this role, they want to make a difference, and they can see that the work that we do does have an effect. We’ve had a positive effect not only on the statistics, but also hopefully on the public image of Surrey Police as a whole, and how we’re trying to drive down the horrific number of five people dying on our roads every single day within the UK.”

Sgt Pascoe said he was “really proud” that the team had won the Award: “Policing isn’t a job that you do for a pat on the back. But a lot of hard work has gone into this, and it’s really nice to be recognised for the work that we’ve done and the work that we’ll continue to do in the future.”

His colleague, PC Elkin, described an average day for the team: “We get research about drivers who are a higher risk than the average person, for reasons such as drug driving, drink driving, or not having a licence or insurance. We’ll work out a plan of action as to where they might be. In between that, we deal with whatever we come across. It could be heavy goods drivers on their phones, it could be someone speeding that then develops into more.

“I think we work really hard, and we get a lot of good results. We know all the custody staff in Guildford on first-name terms because we’re there so often.”

PC Glue added: “A lot of it is trying to educate people who have committed offences, but obviously if they’ve committed serious offences then we will deal with them accordingly. One of the biggest problems we have is drug driving; it’s very prolific. On average, each individual officer will probably arrest two or three people in a week.”

PC Talbut-Smith said: “As well as all that, we do public engagement with road safety events throughout the year, where we engage and educate people to try and reduce the amount of serious collisions in Surrey. I was very pleased that we won this award because it’s nice to have our work being recognised.”

Surrey Police Federation Chair Darren Pemble said: “What worthy winners of our first ever Team of the Year Award! Police officers love making a difference and this terrific team of colleagues certainly do just that.

“They are saving lives and we could not be more prouder of their proactive and excellent work. Well done to all the officers. We look forward to seeing what they do next.”

Representatives of the team will attend the Surrey Police Federation Recognition Awards on Thursday 12 December.

The lead sponsor for the Awards is Axon.

Also sponsoring are Uniform Mortgages, Serve & Protect Credit Union, Flint House, Police Mortgages, No1 Copperpot Credit Union, Niche, No5 Chambers, Accord, Douglas Rowe Financial, Police Mutual, National Police Healthcare Scheme, The Surrey PCC and Metfriendly.