North Yorkshire Council has been urged to create 20mph zones on Hookstone Drive and Hookstone Road to improve road safety.

The topic of speeding cars has become a regular agenda item for the council's Harrogate and Knaresborough area constituency committee and Thursday’s meeting at the Civic Centre was no exception.

Council officers gave an update on the 20mph zone that will be implemented on streets in Harrogate, including Oatlands Drive, as part of a host of measures to improve safety around schools.

However, two roads that won’t see lower speed limits are Hookstone Drive and Hookstone Road, which are used by children walking to and from St John Fisher Catholic High School, St Aidan’s CE High School and Oatlands Junior School.

The current speed limit on these roads is 30mph.

Councillors heard from road safety campaigner Hazel Peacock who queried why Oatlands Drive was part of the scheme whereas these other roads were not.

In response, Melisa Burnham, the council’s highways area manager, said the two roads’ importance to Harrogate’s strategic road network made them unsuitable for lower speed limits.

Her colleague Heather Yendall said introducing measures such as speedbumps to slow traffic could also be unpopular with residents due to the noise created when HGVs drive over them.

Cllr Paul Haslam (Independent, Bilton & Nidd Gorge) asked if speed limits could be changed at certain times, such as when schools opened and closed. He said this would be a “much better way”.

New Lib Dem councillor Andrew Timothy, whose division includes the Hookstone area, said residents assume that motorists will speed on Hookstone Drive with little done to enforce current limits.

Cllr Peter Lacey (Liberal Democrat, Coppice Valley & Duchy) put forward a motion, which was backed by a majority of councillors, that asked officers to explore measures that could reduce speed limits to 20mph on Hookstone Drive and Hookstone Road.

This was despite the council’s own policy already ruling it out.

However, the Lib Dem-controlled committee only has an advisory role, so the council’s Conservative executive would likely reject any moves to lower speed limits on the two roads.

Cllr Michael Harrison (Conservative, Killinghall, Hampsthwaite & Saltergate), who sits on the executive, criticised the move by Liberal Democrats and suggested councillors were wasting officers’ time with the proposal.

He said: 

A new report on 20mph speed limits in the Hookstone area is set to come before the Harrogate and Knaresborough committee in September.