The Parish Council is aware that there are concerns about traffic speeding through the villages. Whilst Councillors try to do what they can to help ease this problem, which has existed for a long time, the Parish Council is neither the Highway Authority nor an enforcement agency, so powers are limited. There is regular Parish Council liaison with the Police and it is always our number one priority raised with them as part of their local priority setting process. Needless to say this is in common with most other Towns and Parishes in the County and so Police resources are stretched and cannot cope with the number of motorists who flagently breach traffic regulations. The Highway Authority (Central Beds) is also unable to combat this problem completely as how ever much traffic calming or how ever much money is spent, it is still up to individual drivers to abide by the rules and they don’t.
So what can we all do?
There is a voluntary SpeedWatch group in the Parish coordinated by one of the Councillors in liaison with Bedfordshire Police. It is not able to operate at the moment due to the lockdown and the Police will let us know when it can start again. It always needs more people to help. So if you can volunteer please let us know – there is training and you have to be available to help operate the SpeedWatch sessions. They need two people at any time and we have access to one shared hand held camera, so the more people the longer we may be able to operate for. In fact if there is anyone who may be prepared to take over the running of the scheme – which does not need to be linked to a Parish Councillor, especially a very busy full time working one, we would all be very grateful to see it become community based.
For more information, please see https://www.bedfordshire.police.uk/information-and-services/Get-involved/Watch-Schemes/Speed-watch.
Volunteers run a session noting the date, time, colour, make, model and registration number of any vehicles exceeding the speed limit. The results are forwarded to the Police who arrange for the registered keeper of the vehicle to be written to, informing them that the vehicle was detected exceeding the speed limit, giving the location, date and time. Persistent speeders will receive a second letter but on the third occasion they can expect further action to be taken. It is also amazing how volunteers out on the roadside wearing high vis jackets can have a great effect on immediately slowing down traffic as many motorists may think it is a mobile Police speed camera.
If all the concerned people in the Parish volunteered to help when the SpeedWatch system is up and running again, it could really help in educating motorists at the very least.
Please email clerk@flittongreenfield.org.uk if you can or would be able to help.