Community Speed Watch well received

A weekly column by Jan Whitbourn of Tulip Events Management

The long awaited Community Speed Watch (CSW) scheme has started and is looking very promising for the future.

For years traffic has been speeding at ridiculous speeds in our villages and complaints for someone to do something about it has caused many volunteers to come forward.

The CSW training course has been worthwhile and the volunteers are now up and running and showing good progress with high results already.

They can be seen in their high visibility Community Speed Watch jackets so everyone will be seen in the designated area where they will be standing over the next few months.

The CSW volunteers will register to carry out speed checks in a controlled and authorised manner within their own parish. Registered keepers of vehicles exceeding the speed limit will be sent letters of advice from the police.

The volunteers will only operate in 30 and 40 mph limits during daylight hours, in areas where town or parish councils or police have concerns about traffic speed.

A volunteer will go out with the co-ordinator to decide where the best place is to stand before they start. The volunteers will be able to run sessions as often as they like or are able and they are not necessarily doing this in their own village. There are many who have agreed to do this out of their area.

This initiative is about educating road users to be more considerate and to realise the dangers of speeding, to get speeding down and asking drivers to drive more safely. You can see this has started to work already. Drivers are visibly slowing down and even waving their thanks at the volunteers.

I visited Chris Dicks and his team in Weston Hills. It was a very professional session and the villagers were visibly pleased to see that someone was actually starting to do something about it.

Chris said that three team members who were out that day were convinced they will have a major effect on safety through both villages as the word spreads. He felt that this initiative will certainly make motorists think whilst travelling through the village in future.

Would you like to be a part of the new Community Speed Watch Scheme, would you like to help reduce speed and keep South Holland a better place to live?

Please tell your friends and family to join in with this scheme, or become involved in setting up a new scheme in their area.

Contact Jan on 07779 895388 or email jan@tulip-events.co.uk

I will try to help and certainly sign you up to come to the next training session which we are trying to set up but need more names to make the training evening worthwhile.

What do you think about the new Community Speed Watch scheme? Email us at: jeremy.ransome@iliffepublishing.co.uk