The councillor responsible for highways in North Yorkshire has defended a review into speeding amid concern the local authority is delaying the introduction of 20 miles per hour speed limits.
Campaigners, headteachers and local councillors have called for a timescale on bringing in 20 miles per hour speed limits in Pannal Ash and Oatlands areas in Harrogate.
But Cllr Keane Duncan, the executive councillor for highways at North Yorkshire Council, said today the authority would not support default 20 miles per hour zones within the county.
It will instead draw up a speed management strategy to “guide a countywide review of speed limits across towns, villages and rural road”.
Cllr Duncan said this “tailored approach” to road safety measures that would not delay road safety measures.
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Hazel Peacock, of the Oatlands Road Safety and Active Travel Campaign, and Dr Jennie Marks, of Pannal Ash Safe Streets, told the meeting 20 miles per hour limits in their areas were “urgently needed” and called for timescales on implementation.
Councillors on the council’s Harrogate and Knaresborough area constituency committee passed a motion supporting the campaigners’ plea last year.
Earlier this week, leaders of 13 schools and education settings in Harrogate also backed the measure.
But it required the support of the council’s Conservative-controlled executive today.
Headteachers, councillors and campaigners united to call for urgent road safety measures this week.
In response, Cllr Duncan said measures were already being considered for the areas which are “not narrowly limited to 20 miles per hour limits only”.
He added:
“Work on these measures is already in progress and nothing within today’s new approach to setting speed limits will delay work that is already ongoing nor prevent implementation of appropriate 20 miles per hour zones in Pannal Ash and Oatlands.”
Cllr Duncan added that proposals for the Otley Road sustainable transport package would go before the council’s Harrogate and Knaresborough area constituency committee in September.
Meanwhile, further consultation on the delayed Oatlands feasibility study, which aims to cut congestion in the area, would be carried out later this year.
