Collaboration builds on successful roadside enforcement and education activities across the West Mercia region
TyreSafe is pleased to announce a new partnership with West Mercia Police, strengthening a shared commitment to improving vehicle safety, reducing road harm and promoting greater awareness of tyre maintenance among road users across the region.
The partnership brings together the UK’s leading tyre safety charity and one of the country’s largest and most geographically diverse police forces, creating new opportunities for education, enforcement and collaborative road safety initiatives.
With road safety remaining a key national priority, the partnership reflects a shared commitment to the Safe System approach, recognising that safer vehicles play a vital role in reducing casualties and preventing avoidable incidents.
Protecting One of the UK’s Largest Rural Road Networks
The partnership is particularly significant given the scale and complexity of the road network policed by West Mercia Police.
Covering Herefordshire, Shropshire and Worcestershire, West Mercia Police is responsible for the fourth-largest geographic police area in England and Wales, spanning approximately 2,868 square miles and serving more than 1.3 million residents across around 550,000 households.
The force area encompasses more than 10,000 miles of roads, around 70% of which consist of rural unclassified roads, country lanes and B-roads. These routes connect hundreds of towns, villages and rural communities, while also supporting major strategic transport corridors including the M5, M50 and M54 motorways, alongside key A-roads such as the A49, A41, A5 and A38.
The territory is characterised by extensive rural landscapes punctuated by major urban and industrial centres including Telford, Worcester, Redditch, Hereford and Shrewsbury, creating a complex mix of local, commercial and long-distance traffic.
With such an extensive road network—predominantly made up of rural routes and country lanes—ensuring vehicles are mechanically sound before setting off is a critical safety factor across West Mercia, where assistance can often be many miles away and road conditions can change rapidly.
The force must balance policing isolated rural communities with managing significant volumes of freight, commercial and commuter traffic travelling through the region on behalf of the wider UK economy.
From On Ground Action to Strategic Partnership
The new partnership builds upon the success of a multi-agency vehicle safety operation conducted on the A5 in Shropshire in April 2026. TyreSafe joined West Mercia Police, Shropshire Fire and Rescue Service and the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) to conduct roadside vehicle inspections designed to assess vehicle condition, identify safety risks and educate road users about the importance of regular maintenance.
Supported by tyre technology partners Translogik and TreadTracker, TyreSafe’s technical team carried out 120 individual wheel inspections across a range of vehicles including passenger cars, vans, heavy goods vehicles and agricultural machinery.
The operation identified tyre-related defects on more than a quarter of vehicles inspected, with the majority classified as serious safety concerns requiring immediate attention. The wider operation also uncovered a range of vehicle, driver and criminal offences, reinforcing the strong link between poor vehicle maintenance, unsafe road use and wider non-compliance.
For all partners involved, the operation demonstrated the value of combining education, enforcement and intelligence gathering to improve road safety outcomes.
Working Together to Reduce Road Harm
The new partnership will see TyreSafe and West Mercia Police work together on future road safety initiatives, enforcement activities and awareness campaigns aimed at improving vehicle condition and encouraging road users to take greater responsibility for tyre safety.
Tyres remain the only point of contact between a vehicle and the road surface, making their condition critical to braking, steering and maintaining control. Yet tyre defects continue to contribute to preventable incidents on UK roads each year.
By combining TyreSafe’s technical expertise and public education capabilities with West Mercia Police’s operational experience and local knowledge, both organisations hope to improve understanding of vehicle safety and reduce risk across the region’s diverse road network.
Commenting on the partnership, TyreSafe Chair Stuart Lovatt said, “We are delighted to formalise our relationship with West Mercia Police and begin working together to improve road safety across one of the UK’s largest and most diverse police force areas.
West Mercia’s road network presents unique challenges, from remote rural lanes and agricultural traffic through to major strategic motorway and freight routes. Across all of these environments, tyre condition remains fundamental to vehicle safety.
Our experience in supporting Operation Spotlight demonstrated both the value of proactive vehicle safety enforcement and the importance of educating road users about the simple maintenance checks that can help prevent incidents before they occur.
This partnership is about more than identifying defects; it is about preventing harm. By combining our expertise and working collaboratively, we can help ensure more vehicles are safe, legal and roadworthy before they set off on their journeys.”
Looking Ahead
As road safety partners continue to support the ambitions set out within the Government’s National Road Safety Strategy, collaboration between enforcement agencies, charities and industry stakeholders will become increasingly important.
Through this new partnership, TyreSafe and West Mercia Police will work together to promote safer vehicles, safer behaviours and ultimately safer roads for all.
