Minutes

Councillor D. Fouweather asked:

At a recent meeting of the police authority, the Labour member for Newport questioned whether the police would be providing extra resources to police the 20mph speed limits. The member was told that there were two pilot areas in Gwent one of which is Newport and the final decision on whether to implement these speed limits permanently would be made once the pilot scheme was concluded.

Considering a considerable amount of money has already been spent on this scheme. Will the council be able to recover the costs of implementing and removing this scheme should it be decided not to continue with it?

I understand that this is Welsh Government money, but it is worth remembering that Welsh Government don’t actually have any money as they have tax payers’ money.

Councillor R Jeavons responded:

As you are aware, Welsh Government have already announced that a national default 20mph speed limit for residential areas in Wales should be introduced as quickly as possible.

The authority has not incurred costs in relation to road safety trials that involve the introduction of 20mph schemes, so the question of the Council recovering costs is not relevant in this case.

Additionally, the 20mph Task Force set up by Welsh Government to consider the new default limit made a number of recommendations, all of which were accepted by Welsh Government, which included the provision of additional resources to local highway authorities to implement the changes. Therefore, the Council does not expect any costs in relation to this proposal.