Road safety campaigners have slammed ‘irresponsible’ town hall bosses for promoting 30mph speed limits near schools.
Stockport council is currently putting up speed awareness signs close to schools as part of a Greater Manchester-wide campaign. Banners will also be placed on railings next to school entrances.
The first signs were installed outside Cheadle Heath Primary School and the roll out is set to continue across the borough over the next 18 months.The authority has plans to introduce 20mph limits on residential roads but says this will take time, and the current campaign is an ‘appropriate activity’, to 'immediately encouraging safer driving practices’.
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But it has been sharply criticised by ‘20s Plenty’ campaigners, who say it is compromising on child safety. Rod King MBE, founder of 20’s Plenty for Us - a 'not for profit’ organisation of nearly 600 local groups - was scathing in his response.
He said: “At a time when the United Nations and World Health Organisation are calling for a maximum limit of 20mph anywhere that motors share roads with people walking or cycling it seems irresponsible that the council should be implying that 30mph is an acceptable speed in the presence of children walking and cycling.
"It shows the chasm between what is best practice and the compromises which Stockport MBC appears to make to child safety. Children need a 20mph limit on their whole route from home to school, anything else is a failure to protect the most vulnerable users on our roads.”
The leading campaigner added: “Speed limits do save lives, but when they are 50pc higher than what is considered appropriate then this sort of messaging does not help!”
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Last July councillors voted to establish an all-group working party, chaired by Coun Sheila Bailey, that would seek to implement a borough-wide 20 mph speed limit on residential roads as soon as possible. A spokesperson for 20s Plenty for Stockport questioned how the current campaign squared with this resolution.
They said: “The chair of the same working group now promoting 30mph speed limits near schools sits very badly with the working group's brief, and also suggests a lack of understanding of the dangers to small children from cars travelling at 30mph.”
However, a spokesperson for the council said it would ‘always support the current speed limit of any road being respected’. They continued: “The promotion of obeying the speed limit through the Greater Manchester-wide speed campaign is not in conflict with other important work the council is undertaking regarding appropriate speed on our roads, as outlined in the report to cabinet on March 15.
“The delivery of changes outlined in the report to cabinet will take time to implement and the current campaign is an appropriate activity immediately encouraging safer driving practices.”
The council is working with Greater Manchester’s Safer Roads Partnership to get motorists to think differently about how they drive - and the journeys they are going to make - before getting behind the wheel. Speed awareness signs are also in the pipeline for Cale Green Primary, Adswood Primary, St George's CE Primary, St Ambrose Primary and Our Lady's Primary in Edgeley.
Statistics show that speeding kills or seriously injures 21pc of people involved in crashes in Greater Manchester, while up to 40pc of car journeys exceed speed limit. On average, 681 people have been killed or seriously injured on Greater Manchester’s roads each year over the last five years.
