Slower Derbyshire

Whilst reading the following remind yourself that Derbyshire County Council's motto is
"Improving life for local people".

On receiving the latest Insight Newsletter I discovered that the council is a "4 star council", "one of the top performing councils in the country". It is confirmed by the inspectors that "our priorities reflect what local people want and what our communities need".

Unfortunately my experience of councils rated excellent¹ is that they fall far short of their supposed rating when it comes to providing services that local people/communities really want or need. However they invariably appear excellent in the following ways:

• providing reasons why ever increasing council taxes are necessary to provide ever decreasing services

• providing excuses why a service/facility that a local community really wants can not be provided

The following will provide a detailed explanation of the views expressed above.

In August 2006 the government required county councils to review local speed limits (see here) across their county and take appropriate action. This is a once in a generation review of speed limits. With such a vital review having long lasting consequences one would have hoped that every single inhabitant's opinion would count.

Suffolk County Council performed this exercise in 1994-1996 of its own initiative. Suffolk launched a consultation to ask communities what they would like to see happen on the roads in their neighbourhoods. The council then formulated a comprehensive policy based on the responses received. One policy was that 30mph speed limits were to be rolled out to communities that wished to have them. You can read Suffolk's speed limit policy here. This appears to be an excellent policy by a county council.

So what happened in Derbyshire? Did the "excellent" county council ask the inhabitants what they would like to see happen in this once in a generation speed limit review? No. They performed this exercise all by themselves and came up with the following less than spectacular report (see here).

The report basically says the following:

• only A/B roads will be considered for review of speed limits²

• not much hope of any more Home Zones or Quiet Lanes³

• 30mph to be the norm for villages⁴

Not exactly an excellent outcome for most local people.

In fact the report failed to mention that there are actually Human Rights considerations to be taken into account when considering speed limits. The most obvious Human Rights include the following:

• article 2 - right to life⁵

• protocol 1, article 1 - peaceful enjoyment of possessions⁶

The council must, by law, take all reasonable steps to ensure that these rights are upheld.

The report also fails to mention whether mean speeds of traffic will be taken into consideration. This was a requirement of the government's guidelines for the setting of local speed limits.

As the new speed limits are rolled out an inconsistent policy is becoming apparent. The following examples are illustrative.

• Weston Underwood is a village on a busy commuter route. However as the road is not an A/B road this means that the existing 40mph speed limit is likely to remain.

• The A515 Ashbourne/Sudbury road has been reduced to 50mph. However one stretch of the road by Fairways Garden Centre has been left at 60mph. This may be for the overtaking lane on one side of the road. But this was not done for the A52 Ashbourne/Derby road when that was reduced to 50mph even though it has a similar overtaking lane.

• Hulland Ward is a village on the A517 that will finally get a 30mph speed limit ⁷. Moss Lane, being an unclassified road on the edge of the village, will continue to have a 60mph speed limit. This is despite the fact that it is a residential street that frequently has children playing on it. There will be no Home Zone in Hulland Ward. This is despite the village having a primary school at its heart and appearing to be exactly the sort of circumstances that the government intended to have a Home Zone.

It was hoped that the council might have adopted a relatively simple policy that would have saved a considerable amount of money in the cost of road signs alone. It would also have been possible to implement the policy relatively quickly. What the council should have done is the following:

• introduce a standard speed limit of 50mph on all minor roads

• introduce a speed limit of 30mph in all towns/villages that want such a limit - not just those on A/B roads

• introduce Home Zones/Quiet Lanes in neighbourhoods that want such facilities

A 50mph limit for all minor roads would be consistent with the long standing limits on the A6 (Belper/Matlock) and A52 (Derby/Ashbourne). One disadvantage of reducing A/B roads to 50mph whilst leaving the minor unclassified roads at 60mph is that this may demean the value of the 50mph speed limit in some motorists eyes making them less likely to observe the lower limit. It also means that many more road signs are required at the frequent 50mph/60mph boundaries - increasing the cost of implementation unneccessarily.

As the government stated "In Quiet Lanes and Home Zones, objectives for improving and maintaining the quality of life for local residents should take precedence over general objectives to ease traffic movements". This is the policy that the county council should be adopting especially as most minor lane networks in Derbyshire satisfy the Quite Lane criterion of fewer than 1000 cars per day.

A number of cities have been introducing 20mph speed limits on a significant proportion of their roads ⁸. It's a policy frequently called "Streets for People". Such speed limits mean that children are far less likely to be killed or seriously injured when close to home. It also means that more people start to walk and cycle - a good thing for the people as well as for the environment. In fact Hull City has been so successful at reducing casualties that it has already exceeded the government casualty reduction targets for 2010 and set more challenging ones for itself!

Why can't Derby/Derbyshire introduce more Home Zones (20mph zones) as well as Quiet Lanes?
Why can't Derbyshire give residents lower speed limits if that is what they want?

Just remind yourself that you have an "excellent" council committed to "improving your life".