The village rallying to demand 20mph speed limits

Residents of a picturesque Suffolk village are campaigning for 20mph speed limits after warning that somebody could be killed.

Locals living in Walsham le Willows secured a 20mph limit on a road passing the village school, playground and residential areas after 90% backed the move in a 2023 consultation.

However, further requests to extend the limits have since been rejected by Suffolk County Council.

Locals say roads around the village are still subject to 60mph national speed limits, despite blind bends, a lack of pavements and increasing traffic.

Speed Watch coordinator Nick Tuck said the current limits were ‘unacceptable’.

‘Do we need to wait for a child on the way to the Sports Club to be killed before anything is done?’ he said.

‘Ideally, we should be able to put the infrastructure in place to slow traffic, such as chicanes, traffic/refuge crossing points, width restrictions or reduced speed limits.

‘Sadly, these all come at a cost, be it to the Parish or the County Councils, they also come with regulations and permissions.

‘Road safety and traffic management are not top of the pile until something goes horribly wrong.’

Parish councillor Janette Winch also said that traffic had increased in the area due to higher demands for housing, bringing commercial vehicles and commuters.

‘We, as residents, feel there’s inconsiderate driving especially with those who don’t live here and are trying to get from A to B,’ she said.

‘Those drivers are under a time pressure but slower speeds don’t massively impact an increase in their journey time.

‘If everybody drove the way some do, we would have accidents all the time. Within the village and the approaching roads, they are all at a national speed limit and it is not appropriate with the volume of traffic coming through.’

Meanwhile Ian Hartley, who is part of the Community Traffic Group, said his road of West Street was once a quiet lane when he moved in 2001.

He explained: ‘When I first moved in and traffic started building up, I applied for a reduced speed limit and was told we didn’t have sufficient density for any road management.

‘Yet half a mile up the road, there’s another tiny hamlet and they’ve got 30mph signs – but no traffic at all. The council couldn’t explain that.

‘Since then, with village expansion, the traffic has increased exponentially to dangerous levels with only the national speed limit in place.

‘These are dangerous, blind bends and for most of us on our street, our access is on the front of the house.’

Residents of Walsham le Willows, which is home to roughly 1,400 people, have called for measures including chicanes, crossings, road narrowing and further speed reductions.

But Suffolk County Council said there was not enough evidence to justify extending the existing 30mph and 40mph zones.

A spokesperson said: ‘We carried out a survey of the roads and also looked at previous information about the area.

‘Based on what we found, there wasn’t enough evidence to support extending the existing 30mph and 40mph speed limits.

‘We only reduce speed limits where there is clear evidence that a lower limit is needed to help keep people safe.’

This comes after Wales introduced a default 20mph limit on most restricted roads in September 2023 despite critics calling the move ‘a war on cars’.

In England, more 20mph limits are becoming increasingly common with Birmingham recently making headlines with plans to introduce 20mph limits on all non-A roads.

A resident of Stanford Rivers, in Essex, has also created a homemade camera system which detects a vehicle’s speed and uses AI to post on social media the worst offenders.

The creator, who wants to remain anonymous, posted on their blog that the project was attributed to ‘a healthy grudge against bad driving’.