Powys County Council unsuccessful in bid for 20 mph residential areas

POWYS County Council has been unsuccessful in a bid to have a community be part of the Welsh Government trial of reducing the speed limit to 20mph in residential areas.

At a meeting of the Economy, Residents and Communities scrutiny committee on Monday, July 12, councillors asked for an update on the road safety proposal.

Cllr Kelvyn Curry said: “We’re all very concerned about the number of injuries and deaths on our roads, and as I’m sure most people will know, from March/April 2023 all town centres and parts of cities will have 20mph (miles per hour) speed limits.

“I just wonder how that’s progressing in Powys?

“Reducing speed limits, the injuries for pedestrians are going to be considerably less than an impact at 30mph.”

“Do we know where the designated areas are going to be?

“Is it going to be all town centres, will it be villages, which parts of our community will be involved?”

Director of Economy and Environment, Nigel Brinn, said: “We did bid and tried hard to get one of the trial locations across Wales, but we were unsuccessful.

“They tended to focus on areas where there are already 20mph zones in place.”

Mr Brinn added that the first set of all Wales meetings to discuss how to implement the change of speed limit were now being set up and that council staff would be involved in them.

He added that they could come to a future meeting and “explain a bit more” after these discussion haves started.

At a council meeting in September 2020, Cllrs Jackie Charlton and Stephen Hayes had a motion to bring down the speed in Powys’ towns down to 20mph backed by councillors.

This followed the Senedd voting in July 2020 of having 20mph as a default speed limit in residential streets.

The decision is supposed to come into force in 2023 and power over national speed limits was devolved to Wales in 2018.

Earlier this month the Welsh Government started a 12-week public consultation on the proposal which will end on October 1.

The first phase of introducing the 20mph default speed limit has started in eight communities across Wales.

According to the Welsh Government, the information collected from these areas will be used to “to support and inform future decisions.”

These communities are:

St Dogmaels, Pembrokeshire
Llanelli North, Carmarthenshire
St Brides Major, Vale of Glamorgan
Central north, Cardiff
Cilfrew Village, Neath Port Talbot
Abergavenny, Monmouthshire
Severnside, Monmouthshire
Buckley, Flintshire