BOLTON is Greater Manchester Police's (GMP) biggest borough of concern for road safety, the force has confirmed.

After analysing the safety of highways across the region and putting together a "threat matrix", GMP deems Bolton to be the most dangerous out of the 10 boroughs at present.

Police say they are stepping up patrols in the town to combat speeding.

Chief Inspector Matt Bailey-Smith of GMP’s Safer Transport Team, said: "During 2020, the Safer Transport Team at GMP has worked hard to review the safety of our roads, and look at changes that can be made to reduce the high risk areas in particular.

“We have introduced a key team to analyse internal and external data to identify our key areas of threat, and high risk drivers.

"This data is then used to prepare a 'threat matrix' which uses various sets of data to provide that threat assessment for all Greater Manchester.

“Currently, Bolton is our highest area of 'threat' and is therefore subject to increasing deployments to look at issues of speed, anti-social use of vehicles and intelligence.

"This includes general patrolling, as well as regular roadside operations.

“We recognise that many people drive carefully and stick to speed limits and we would like to thank them for doing so.

"I would also ask people to tell us about their concerns, whether that is a road where they feel unsafe or about a person who may be driving illegally or anti-socially so we can use this to inform our threat assessment."

Figures from a GMP Freedom of Information request also found there were 12 fatal crashes in Bolton from September 2019 to August 2020.

CI Bailey-Smith added: “Greater Manchester has seen another challenging year with an increase in serious and fatal collisions."

"Each one is a tragedy and improve travel safety across our communities."

Road safety charity Brake director of campaigns Joshua Harris said: “Every road death is a preventable tragedy and so it is deeply concerning to see that there were 12 fatal crashes on Bolton’s roads in the space of a year.

"We need lower default speed limits for our urban and rural roads and we need to give the police the tools and resources to enforce the rules of the road effectively.

"The deaths in Bolton will have caused devastation to families, friends and likely whole communities – we owe it to them to do all we can to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”