Rollout of 20mph zones seen as a 'disaster' with hundreds of villages to miss out and volunteer speed watch to be axed
Summary
The rollout of 20mph speed zones is seen as a “disaster” as only around 40 out about 400 Gloucestershire villages and communities will benefit while the community speed watch is being quietly axed. That is the view of opposition councillors who quizzed Gloucestershire County Council chiefs over their safer roads and community 20s scheme.
Details
Serious concerns were raised during the meeting that a volunteer-led community initiaive which was set up to help reduce speeding by recording vehicle speeds with specialised devices will no longer be funded. Shire Hall’s former leader Stephen Davies (C, Hardwicke and Severn) questioned how his Liberal Democrat successor could claim their policy is a success.
The Conservative also explained during the meeting that the reason his administration did not offer a 20mph across the whole county was because he knew the traffic regulation order (TRO) was broken. These orders are legal documents used by councils to make changes to the road network such as restricting or regulating road usage such as speed limits, parking, and introducing one-way streets.
However, making a TRO is a lengthy and costly process. Councillor Davies said: “I understand about 400 parishes and local communities expressed an interest in 20mph. By my calculations, in all three phases announced only about 40 will see anything within two or three years.
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“We may talk about TROs later and the disaster that that remains. How can she say this is a success? And then we hear that the community speed watch programme has been stopped.
“So those people not in the 20mph programme have nothing we can do for them. I don’t think that’s a successful policy. It’s a disaster.” Council leader Lisa Spivey (LD, South Cerney) said she has “always been very honest” that it was not going to be a blanket scheme everywhere all at once.
She recognised there are communities who will be disappointed they are not going to get an immediate introduction of the 20mph limit. But she criticised the previous Conservative administration over their inaction on implementing such a policy and said they asked for one “for the best part of 10 years”. “I guess we have some differing opinions on what measures of success are,” she said.
“When I became a councillor, one of the first motions we brought in 2021 around the Stockholm Convention,” she added. “The previous administration refused to take any kind of action on it. So I am proud that we made it a priority.