Road collisions in King's Norton and Longbridge
68 serious and fatal collisions were recorded across these 4 wards between 2021 and 2025, 2 of them fatal. Together the wards hold 56,515 residents, which works out at 1.20 serious collisions per 1,000 people against a Birmingham average of 1.86.
The short version
- Longbridge & West Heath is where the harm is concentrated — 38 of the 68 serious collisions, and both deaths.
- But per resident it is no worse than King's Norton North. Longbridge & West Heath has 1.9× the collisions and 1.9× the people. Once population is taken into account the two are within 2% of each other.
- One road, the A441, runs through 3 of these 4 wards and accounts for 10 collisions here — and 36 across the 8 Birmingham wards it passes through.
- Druids Heath & Monyhull’s figure of 1 needs checking before it is used. It is the lowest of all 69 wards in the city and we cannot rule out a boundary effect.
Serious and fatal collisions only — slight-injury collisions are excluded. Figures are police records (DfT STATS19) point-matched to 2021 ONS ward boundaries. Full method and limitations.
Every serious and fatal collision, 2021–2025
Each of the 68 collisions at the location the attending officer recorded. Zoom in to see individual serious (blue) and fatal (red) collisions against the street layout, so a junction can be named rather than described. Click a ward for its totals.
Boundaries are the ONS generalised (20 m) clipped ward dataset, so ward edges are smoothed. Plotting the points inside those boundaries returns 38, 20, 9, 1 — the same figures as the table below, which are derived separately, so the two routes through the data agree.
Ward by ward
| Ward | Serious/fatal collisions | Deaths | Population | Per 1,000 | Rank of 69 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Longbridge & West Heath | 38 | 2 | 21,649 | 1.76 | 20 |
| King's Norton North | 20 | 0 | 11,642 | 1.72 | 47 |
| King's Norton South | 9 | 0 | 11,581 | 0.78 | 65 |
| Druids Heath & Monyhull | 1 | 0 | 11,643 | 0.09 | 69 |
| These 4 wards | 68 | 2 | 56,515 | 1.20 | — |
| Birmingham, all 69 wards | 2,129 | 109 | 1,144,919 | 1.86 | — |
Rank is by collision count, worst first. We do not publish a per-head rank against the city because that needs the population of all 69 wards, and we hold Census figures only for the wards on this page.
Longbridge & West Heath and King's Norton North carry the same risk per resident
By raw count Longbridge & West Heath looks roughly 1.9 times worse: 38 collisions against 20. It also has 1.9 times the residents — 21,649 against 11,642. Per 1,000 people the two come out at 1.76 and 1.72.
If resource follows collision counts, Longbridge & West Heath receives roughly double what King's Norton North receives for materially the same risk per person living there. That may still be the right call — Longbridge & West Heath has the deaths and more injured people in absolute terms, and a ward on a through-route carries traffic its own residents did not generate. The point is that it should be a decision rather than a by-product of which measure the report happened to use.
Per-head rates divide by residents, not by traffic. Vehicle-mile exposure is not published below local authority level, so a ward on a main road will always look worse per resident than its own residents’ risk warrants.
The A441 runs through 3 of these wards
The A441 is the highest-recorded road in 4 of the 8 Birmingham wards it passes through, and in King's Norton North and King's Norton South it is the only road recorded at all. So it is not a road that ward-level reporting hides. What ward-level reporting hides is that these are the same road: along its full length it accounts for 36 serious and fatal collisions across 8 wards. A scheme along the corridor reaches 3 of these 4 wards at once, rather than 3 separate ward-level conversations about a local traffic problem.
| Ward the A441 passes through | Serious/fatal collisions on it |
|---|---|
| Bournbrook & Selly Park | 11 |
| Edgbaston | 5 |
| King's Norton Northon this page | 5 |
| Balsall Heath West | 4 |
| Longbridge & West Heathon this page | 3 |
| Bournville & Cotteridge | 3 |
| Stirchley | 3 |
| King's Norton Southon this page | 2 |
Counts the first road recorded on each collision, so this is a floor rather than a total.
Year by year
Serious and fatal collisions across King's Norton and Longbridge, per year
2025: 15 (up 87.5% on the year before) · peak 16 in 2021 · -6.2% across the period
Axis clipped to the data range to show year-on-year movement.
Longbridge & West Heath is the only ward here with enough collisions for a yearly pattern to mean anything, and its run is 11, 8, 7, 3, 9. With numbers this small a single year’s movement can be chance — but a three-year improvement followed by a reversal is worth asking about locally before it is treated as noise. The other wards are flat year to year at counts too low to read.
One figure on this page we would not use without checking
Druids Heath & Monyhull records one serious collision in five years, the lowest of all 69 Birmingham wards. We have been unable to rule out a boundary-matching effect and would not use the figure without checking it against West Midlands Police records.
We flag it rather than publish it quietly because it is the kind of number that gets repeated in a meeting. Plotting the collision points independently returns the same figure, so it is not an error in our ward matching — but both routes use the same boundary file, so a collision recorded on a boundary road could be landing in the neighbouring ward in both. If West Midlands Police hold their own ward-level figures, a comparison would settle it, and we would like to know the answer either way.
What the data shows on street design
STATS19 records the location of each collision, the vehicles and people involved, and injury severity. It contains no field for street design, for whether a road has been treated, or for the presence of any scheme. Collision records establish where injuries occur, not why. A causal test requires a comparison — a treated site against an untreated one, or the same site before and after a dated change.
Published casualty effects of the individual measures
| Measure | Measured effect | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 20mph zones with physical traffic calming | 41.9% reduction in casualties (95% CI 36.0–47.8%). Larger effect on KSI than on slight injuries. No displacement to adjacent areas. | Grundy et al., BMJ 2009;339:b4469. Controlled interrupted time series, 119,029 London road segments, 1986–2006. |
| 20mph limits, signs only, no physical measures | Insufficient evidence of any significant change in collisions or casualties. Median speed reduction under 1 mph. | Atkins, AECOM and Maher for the Department for Transport, 20mph Research Study, 2018. Twelve schemes. |
| Low traffic neighbourhoods | 37% reduction in KSI inside the area (95% CI 24–48%). No evidence of change on boundary roads. Injuries returned to previous levels where schemes were removed. | Furlong et al., Injury Prevention, 2025. Controlled before-and-after, 113 London schemes, STATS19 road-link data to 2024. |
| Healthy Streets Approach as a framework | No published evaluation of its effect on killed-or-seriously-injured casualties located. Its published outputs are street-quality and design scores. | — |
The casualty evidence attaches to individual measures rather than to the framework, and within 20mph interventions it separates according to whether physical change accompanied the limit.
Birmingham City Council, Road Harm Reduction Strategy and Action Plan, March 2025: formally adopts the Healthy Streets Approach and its ten indicators (pp. 17–20). Action plan, p. 36, lists “Develop BTP Corridor 5 Interventions (A441, Longbridge Lane and Lickey Road)”, with the rationale “Targeted interventions to redesign corridors in suburban Birmingham using the Healthy Streets Approach, to reduce road harm risk.” Delivery mechanism, delivery timeframe and partners for that action are each recorded as “To be identified”. The document contains no Birmingham-specific numeric KSI reduction target, and states a scale of approximately 22 people killed and 400 seriously injured on Birmingham's roads each year.
Where these numbers come from
- Collisions and casualties. Department for Transport, Road Safety Data (STATS19), 2021–2025. Open Government Licence v3, published at data.dft.gov.uk and data.gov.uk.
- Ward populations. Office for National Statistics, Census 2021 table TS001, usual residents, 21 March 2021, by 2021 electoral ward, via NOMIS dataset c2021ts001.
- Ward boundaries and codes. ONS Open Geography Portal, 2021 electoral wards, generalised (20 m) clipped. E05011152 Longbridge & West Heath; E05011148 King's Norton North; E05011149 King's Norton South; E05011133 Druids Heath & Monyhull.
- Our method. swiftassistuk.co.uk/methodology, including how collisions are matched to wards and why severity recording changed mid-period.
If a figure here conflicts with your own records, tell us. We would rather correct it than have it repeated. Ward-level breakdowns for any other part of Birmingham, any single road or junction, or the same analysis as a spreadsheet, are free for public-sector and community use — ask the data desk.
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