‘Will of the people’: Whitby group calls on council to reconsider previously rejected 20mph speed limits policy

The 20’s Plenty for North Yorkshire campaign has called on the council to reconsider a policy of stricter speed limits in towns and villages across the county.

The council’s transport scrutiny committee will this week hear from councillors who “called in” a decision by the authority’s executive to not support area-wide or default 20mph speed limits.

The meeting, on July 26, will determine whether or not the committee wants to refer the decision back to the council’s executive for reconsideration or to the full council.

The Green Party’s Cllr Andy Brown, said: “Parishes up and down North Yorkshire have asked for 20mph to be the default speed limit in their village.

“North Yorkshire Council is claiming to be the most local large council in the country and to be devolving power but unless they listen to their own residents and introduce 20mph areas much more rapidly and widely, that claim to be responsive to local needs is a sham”.

The Whitby Community Network has also come out in favour of the proposal, stating that stricter speed limits would lead to “safer, quieter, cleaner, more economically thriving, better places to be”.

However, a council report presented to the executive committee’s meeting on July 4 noted there had been “notable concern over the introduction of default 20mph speed limits”, including over “the lack of enforcement”, which was considered particularly important.

The 20’s Plenty campaign has said that “majorities of respondents in North Yorkshire’s communities want 20mph as a norm in settlements” and not as a “blanket”.

Andy Jefferson, a member of 20’s Plenty for Whitby, said that a survey by the group showed that a “default 20mph in our towns and villages is the will of the people”.

He added: “The survey backs up previous surveys performed around the UK, with people wanting the places where they are to be more pedestrian and bicycle friendly.

“North Yorkshire Council should bear in mind when deciding the roll out of 20mph schemes [that] they are there to serve the residents.”

Minutes of the council’s executive meeting on July 4 state that Cllr Keane Duncan, the member for highways, “confirmed his belief that effective action was in all cases better than ‘urgent action’”.

He said that as a result, the authority was working with councillors, residents and schools to deliver “a package of measures aimed at genuinely improving road safety” that was not “narrowly limited to 20mph limits only, but 20mph zones, traffic calming, new crossing points, and public transport infrastructure improvements too”.

Cllr Duncan was recently chosen as the Conservative Party candidate in the mayor of York and North Yorkshire election next year.

The council’s Transport, Economy, Environment and Enterprise Overview and Scrutiny Committee will meet on Wednesday, July 26 to discuss the call-in.