County council leader defends 20mph speed limits on LBC

Appearing on the conservative radio host's LBC breakfast show on Friday, Ms Leffman was asked what was the rationale behind it.

The Lib Dem councillor replied: “We’ve had a policy for the last 18 months in Oxfordshire which is to reduce all 30mph speed limits down to 20 and I have to say it’s been embraced by people across the county."

Mr Ferrari asked “How do you know it’s been embraced?"

Ms Leffman replied: “Because we’ve left it open to individual communities to come to us and say that they want a 20mph speed limit and we’ve had well over 70 communities coming to us asking for that and indeed one of those was Witney Town Council so we were very happy to approve that for them.”

READ ALSO: Witney split over new 20mph speed limit as more than half oppose move in consultation

Ms Leffman explained that the aim was to make it safer for people to walk and cycle “but it also reduces speeds across the town which means better air quality. And I have to say that Witney is one area of Oxfordshire where air quality has been particularly poor over the years so we want to encourage people to leave their cars at home and cycle and walk wherever they can.

“But we do understand that people come into the town to shop and what we want is to be able to encourage them to park their cars and then move around the town safely but walking and cycling.”

Mr Ferrari said: “If you follow your rationale further, why not reduce it to 15mph?”

She replied: “Well, I suppose we could do that but 20mph seems to be the speed that people are quite happy to move around at. We’ve done it in a number of areas – in fact the centre of Oxford is now 20mph. Where I live in Charlbury we’ve had a 20mph speed limit for some time. And what happens is that people do generally tend to slow down. I’m not saying they all drive at 20mph but they certainly drive at under 30mph."

Mr Ferrari insisted if you follow the rationale, why not reduce the speed limit to 15mph or 12mph.

Ms Leffman replied: “I think, if we could, we’d like people not to use their cars in built-up areas at all but that’s something of an ambition and it’s not something that’s going to happen overnight.”

Mr Ferrari asked about enforcement and whether speed cameras or the local police would need to be involved.

Ms Leffman said: “It will have to involve the police and of course the police are consultees when it comes to speed limits. They are generally supportive. We’ve got a lot of Speedwatch teams around the county and they do a good job of encouraging people to slow down so I think we can enforce this.

“Obviously we are not going to be enforcing it on a daily basis. We are relying on people to understand why we want to do this and I think they will.

“I’m reminded of when people were asked to use seatbelts in the past and they were quite reluctant to do it but now of course nobody would think of going anywhere without wearing a seatbelt and I think it’s going to be the same when to comes to lowering speeds.”

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Mr Ferrari said the move followed the Welsh Government announcing that all residential roads in the country will have the speed limit reduced to 20mph.

Sam from Cardiff rang in and said he had a question "for the environmental people".

“What if you’re driving 33 per cent slower then your car is going to be on for 33 per cent longer. It takes longer to do the journey so I’m not sure the environmental argument is that strong.”

He added “if it takes longer to get anywhere from a business point of view that’s not excellent.

“Your previous guest said they are not enforcing it every day. So, what, on a Tuesday you don’t have to go at 20mph but you do on a Wednesday because that’s an enforcement day?”

And James, a bus driver, who lives and works around Witney, said it was a lovely country town where “people for the most part are sensible”.

He said they expected to come across cars, horses and children on bicycles and “it seems to me it’s always motorists that get penalised”.

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