Council confirms talks are ongoing about which roads will revert to 30mph
Elgan Hearn, local democracy reporter
A local authority has confirmed that talks on which roads could revert back to 30mph from the controversial default 20 mph speed limit are still ongoing.
The 20mph speed limit in Wales came into force on September 17, 2023
Following a massive backlash against the new speed limit which included a petition signed by just under 470,000 people calling for it to be scrapped, the Labour Welsh Government made a partial U-turn on the issue.
Feedback
The government asked people across Wales to contact their local authority, such as Powys County Council, with feedback on how their changes to the national default speed limit had been implemented on specific roads.
This period for “feedback” took place between April and August last year.
Last September Powys council announced that they had received comments on 48 individual sites or sections of road that were to be assessed against the revised government guidance on speed limits which had been published in July last year.
The council said there would be ” further opportunities” for people to have their say during the process.
At the time cabinet member for highways and transport Liberal Democrat Cllr Jackie Charlton said that it was “pleasing” that so many “positive comments” were received supporting the 20mph policy.
Neighbouring councils
Last month neighbouring councils Wrexham and Monmouthshire finished their road reviews.
Wrexham council announced that it intends changing 52 stretches of road back to 30mph from 20 mph, while Monmouthshire council has said that all roads there that were set at 20mph would stay at that speed.
The LDRS has asked Powys council for an update on how their review is proceeding and when a list of any potentials changes will be made public.
A spokesman for the council has said: “We are currently consulting county councillors and town and community councils on our review.
“We have listened to the public and reviewed their requests, putting together draft proposals to say that this is what the public have asked but what the council thinks based on the Welsh Government’s review criteria.
“Once we have had feedback from county councillors and town and community councils, we will finalise the proposals and formally publish.”
Welsh Government guidance says a 30mph speed limit could be set if the road is “located outside city, town or village centres” and “away from places that attract frequent pedestrian and/or cyclist traffic”.
It also says that the limit can be raised on: “roads with low housing density and where, if there are pedestrians and cyclists, they are or could be segregated from motor traffic.”
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I hope they feel more generous than Labours Cardiff Council in their findings. Four roads in the whole of Cardiff and one of those is a 400 yard stretch on Western.Avenue between two 30 mph signs. Once again they ignore the majority of people who put them there in the first place.
That 400 yards on Western Avenue probably effects more drivers than any other single 20 mph speed limit and will be probably be welcomed by many but just watch out for the speed camera just beyond.
At least Cardiff did exempt some major roads unlike useless Wrexham.
It’s all a con, councils have to abide by the senedd rules of where these limits are set, the senedd is not going to let the electorate win or even have a say, we have elected our representatives to ride roughshod over us to live in the utopia designed in their minds not ours, for 26 years Wales has disintegrated in to a third world country with the worst living standards, worst health care, worst education standards, in the UK everything is underfunded scraping the bottom of the barrel, this speed limit is going to cost Wales 8.9 billion pounds… Read more »
Most of that list can be laid at 14 years of Tory London austerity and 40 years plus of neo-liberal economic mainstream ideas which have destroyed a large part of the UK.
Most of that £8.9 billion is an illusory cost that simply does not exist. It is a London Treasury model used to inflate the economic effects of infrastructure projects which also turn out to be an illusion. I am more impressed with fewer injuries and less severe “accidents”.
Some of the roads set at 20mph are preposterous. I can’t believe they got an award for the roll-out: they literally did in the laziest way possible.