Speedwatch

There is common concern in the village at the speed of vehicles passing through. To this end, the Parish Council has written to Leicestershire Highways suggesting an extension of the 30mph speed limits on both Uppingham Road and Hallaton Road. On both these roads pedestrians have to walk on the carriageways in order to reach village amenities. For the responses from LCC Highways see: letter from LCC Highways Dept (PDF File) and forwarded letter from HDC (PDF File).

For either speed limit extension or traffic calming measures to be implemented it is clear that evidence is needed in order to make an informed decision. Therefore the Parish Council has undertaken a covert traffic survey on the 4 main routes into the village and the results can be found on the Medbourne Traffic page of the Parish Council web site.

It is also possible for the village to implement a formal speedwatch programme (see www.communityspeedwatch.org.uk). However, the process is somewhat bureacratic and costly as several village volunteers would need to sign up for formal training at some cost. The benefit of such a programme would be verifiable evidence of excess speed.

The alternative is for the village to become more proactive at recording instances of bad road behaviour. Whilst such evidence would still be anecdotal, over time it would be possible to analyse the data to recognise peak times for problems and repeat offenders.

Evidence Gathering

Someone from the village has volunteered to collate the evidence. To this end a special email speedwatch@medbourne.org.uk has been set up. For the evidence to be useful it is necessary to have certain core information like time, place, vehicle, etc. For this reason the form below is the preferred method for reporting an instance. This covers not only speed but also accidents, near misses, use of mobile phones, etc.

Medbourne Parish Council is fully supportive of this evidence gathering initiative.

What can be done with the data?

There are a variety of uses for data regarding bad road behaviour:

• Leicestershire Police provide a Speed Complaint Form that can be submitted to report incidents. It is felt that evidence of a pattern of repeated bad behaviour would carry extra weight and enable the police to deploy speed cameras at the most appropriate times.
• Evidence can be provided to Leicestershire County Council to support our requests for alteration of speed limits.
• The Parish Council may choose to deploy traffic calming measure like speed-activated road signs. Given the limited resources at the Council's disposal it will be very useful to have evidence regarding which roads would benefit most from such measures.

Form for reporting a road problem

Please fill in the form below and press "Submit". Mandatory fields are marked with a "*".