Green verging on the ridiculous

Thanks to the Green Party for adding some entertainment to the Coleridge by-election campaign with their recent newsletter.

Outgoing councillor, Chris Howell, has provided us with his fisking of their newsletter:

Their stuff on the East Area committee ranges from confused to grossly misleading.

On speeding

The vote at East Area committee was only won on a recount, after fierce opposition from Green party Councillor Margaret Wright who described the use of police resources to enforce residential speed limits as a scandalous waste of resources. You wouldn't guess that from the Greens' newsletter.

On verges

The Greens claim they wanted to make verge repairs the number one priority at East Area committee, and this "did not get any support from Coleridge's currently elected Councillors". This point is utterly misleading - it's debatable if it is even factually accurate, as the vote that Adam Pogonowski forced was a nonsense amendment proposed for the purpose of political points scoring and I think I made that point at the meeting, whilst confirming that I agreed it should be top priority.

The committee had over many meetings narrowed down the projects to be funded by the Council's environmental improvements budget. At the last meeting, there was enough money left to implement all the remaining projects under consideration except one, so we picked a project that in the unlikely event all the projects proved to be technically feasible and supported in public consultation would be dropped on lack of budget grounds. That was not grass verges, which had therefore been allocated funding.

Adam then put forward an amendment seeking to set a priority for funding amongst the projects that we had just agreed full funding for - as there was no further contention for funds between these projects as they were all fully funded, this didn't actually result in any additional priority - all funded projects were to be moved forward as quickly as possible.

On the reason for the by-election

"Conservative Councillor Chris Howell ... Perhaps ashamed of the savage cuts the coalition government is undertaking, he resigned."

This is a completely false accusation designed to imply to the electorate that I resigned because of a disagreement with the coalition government's policies on the deficit - for the record, overall I am delighted with the direction of the coalition, both because of their firm but considered approach to tackling the budget deficit, and in the related area of how they are seeking to roll back the patronising, expensive, bullying top down government that is blighting so many local services and local communities.

Specifically, on the budget, my view is that if you borrow beyond your means and give every impression that you aren't that interested in repaying the debt at any point - which appears to be this week's policy from both Labour and the Greens - investors will only lend you money if you offer very high interest payments, and eventually they will stop lending altogether, as the risk of the government failing to repay the debt becomes too high. The firm action of the coalition has already ensured that the immediate crisis has been averted, and interest payments on UK government debt are already lower than they would have been under a Labour (or Green) government.

I certainly don't support the argument that the risks to the economy are lowered by delaying action on the deficit, rather if the coalition government hadn't taken the steps it has, it really would have had a devastating effect on the government's ability to provide essential services in future, and would have left our children with a horrible mess to fix.

If my blog post wasn't enough for them, and they wanted to confirm my position, they could have asked and I would have made it clear what they wrote was false.

City Centre set for 20mph limit

The County Council is planning to introduce a 20mph speed limit across the historic centre of Cambridge on a trial basis, following a review of the Council’s policy on 20 mph speed limits.

The central area of Cambridge has particularly high levels of cycling and significant pedestrian activity, and following various 'core scheme' changes, there is now very little through traffic in the City Centre, so a 20mph limit seems wholly more appropriate than on, for example, Mill Road.

The plan below shows the area covered by the new limit. Note - as it’s environment is very different to the rest of the Core area, Victoria Avenue has not been included.

The public notice advising of the proposal was placed in the Cambridge Evening News on Friday, November 20th. If you wish to object or comment on the proposed 20mph limit please contact the County Council by December 14th 2009.

Once the trial is running, monitoring will be undertaken to assess the impact on speeds, casualty levels and user attitudes, as well as gauging public perception of the trial and assess whether vulnerable road users such as pedestrians and cyclists have benefited from it. There will be an on-line “before” and “after” surveys to assess how people feel about conditions on street before and during the trial, which will be conducted over a 12 month period.

I think it will be particularly interesting to know if the 20mph limit actually reduces the number of vehicles driving at high speeds likely to cause serious injuries to pedestrians and cyclists in a collision, or if various road users still carry on driving much as before.

Further information on the trial can be found at www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/transport/20mph

Police Respond to Speed Priority

The police have been in action today on Coleridge Road checking for speeding vehicles, following the successful campaign by Andy Bower to make speeding on residential roads a neighbourhood policing priority.

East Area neighbourhood Sargeant Mark Kathro issued at least one ticket for significantly exceeding the 30mph speed limit, after several previous sessions of speed checks by our PCSOs that resulted in advice being issued to residents.

I don't want to see the police issuing any tickets, but exceeding the 30mph speed limit on residential roads is socially unacceptable and increases the risk of any collision causing serious injuries - many people we speak to want action to stop drivers breaking the speed limit. The message needs to be spread far and wide that if you speed on residential roads in Coleridge you could get a ticket, so please just don't do it.

Many thanks to Mark and his team for following up on this neighbourhood priority - if communicating the message that action is being taken results in fewer people breaking the speed limit, it will be a good result in terms of residents concerns being taken into account, community engagement by the neighbourhood policing team, and real action resulting from this.

Speed patrols on problem Coleridge Roads

Following Coleridge Conservatives victory at East Area committee, the police are finally taking a role in speed enforcement on residential roads in Coleridge.

Our PCSOs were out today on Birdwood Road and Coleridge Road spending an hour on each checking the speed of the cars and motorcycles passing by, and some warning letters will be issued. Further checks are planned for Rustat Road.

I hope going forwards this can be developed into a more co-ordinated approach to tackling the problem of speeding drivers. I met with the new neighbourhood Sergeant for Coleridge a few weeks ago to discuss anti-social behaviour issues, crime reporting and to chase up some action on the new neighbourhood policing priority of speed enforcement on residential roads. I was surprised to learn that unknown to local Councillors, the road safety partnership has already undertaken the detailed speed monitoring that has been reported from other areas on key roads like Coleridge Road and I think Birdwood Road - this will indicate the real scale of the problem, as it records all cars speeds over a period of time, without giving warning such that drivers would slow down. I look forward to seeing the results of this speed monitoring, unfortunately I couldn't just be given them, so it has taken a Freedom of Information request, and I am still waiting...

Speeding priority moves forward

Following our victory at East Area committee on police speeding enforcement, I have been trying to help move forward this priority, and suggested the following action plan:

• Ask Councillors in East Area what the key problem roads are that they would like to see tackled. (For Coleridge I suggest Coleridge Road and Birdwood Road top priorities, then Rustat Road and Cherry Hinton Road).
  
• Prioritise Roads for consideration.
  
• Use speed monitoring equipment (as used in Queen Ediths Way to assess situation prior to action)
  
• Police enforcement action, backed up with local publicity, press, Speedwatch etc. over a period of time.
  
• Use speed monitoring equipment again to determine if actions have had an effect even when enforcement patrols not present.
  
• Evaluate if we have learnt anything useful for tackling this problem going forwards
  

These suggestions have now been considered by the officers Neighbourhood Action Group and they will come up with their version of the plan - we will be taking a close interest in this to ensure it reflects the priority adopted by the committee.

Surprise victory on policing speeding in East Area

Policing priorities for Abbey, Coleridge, Petersfield and Romsey were again up for discussion at the council's East Area Committee this last Thursday.

We learnt that the Speedwatch scheme which had been kicked off at the previous opportunity to set policing priorities on 15th January had only operated two sessions in the entire four-month period, only one 34-minute session of which was in Coleridge, and issued three letters to speeding motorists, only one of which was for the Coleridge Road session. For ongoing activities, only four volunteers have been trained.

This was despite the Speedwatch scheme being publicised across the ward by Conservatives and again to hotspots, as well as being publicised by Labour and apparently also by PCSOs, although I'm not sure how that was done.

The wording accepted for the priority in January was:

Speedwatch – to assist community volunteers to administer the initiative.

Whereas the alternative to which Cllr Howell tried to amend the priority but which was rejected by all other councillors present, was:

Tackle speeding on residential roads in East Area primarily through police monitoring and enforcement and also co-ordination of other activities such as Speedwatch that may help reduce problems.

Nevertheless, Cllr Howell went on to support the unamended priority, as despite deep reservations from within the Conservative team in Coleridge about the nature of the Speedwatch scheme we were happy to support a pilot of the initiative - we have an open mind to the possibilities.

As a member of the public I questionned the effectiveneness of Speedwatch during the period, wanting to know how many police patrols would have been possible had the priority been set differently, to which the sergeant, astonishingly, could not provide an answer.

Even more bizarrely the sargeant then went on to ask if I would really have wanted them not to concentrate on proper crimes like theft. While I am very sympathetic to that point, it did not make sense to me in the context - surely these are priorities set by the councillors for the local team and therefore Speedwatch was given roughly a third of the resources available for prioritisation - if this was not the case then then what is the point of the priorities? Were the police only too pleased that a priority had been selected that didn't require much effort? I don't ever remember the councillors taking this differential attention into account in their priority-setting process.

When the priorities came up for debate, Chris Howell tried for the fourth time since his election to the city council last May to get proper police action on speeding onto the priorities list. To my astonishment, and I think to that of some of the councillors too, Chris was at last successful in this mission, supported belatedly by his fellow ward councillors and Cllr Wright from Abbey, winning the vote 4-3!

The new priority is:

Tackling speeding on residential roads in East Area to include systematic evaluation of the problems and police enforcement action.

The police sergeant present when his recommended priorities for the next quarter were ammended was taken aback and wondered how they were going to achieve this. My first thought was: if you are struggling with this level of democratic involvement just you wait until we have elected police chiefs under a Conservative government! This rather makes a mockery of the Policing Pledge presented to us at the beginning of the neighbourhood policing agenda item!

When Coleridge Conservatives recently surveyed residents on how best to tackle speeding vehicles in Coleridge we found only 1.6% of respondents supporting the Speedwatch-style approach. Police patrols (as favoured by Coleridge Conservatives) and fixed speed cameras were the preferred solutions:

One of the arguments that Speedwatch proponents keep putting is that the scheme will help to identify areas that have a speeding problem. In my view this is a bogus argument and Speedwatch will only achieve a level of information equivalent to existing anecdotal evidence as the experience of Speedwatch teams is that people slow down for their setup, so they cannot gauge the natural speeds at which people are proceeding.

In contrast, the systematic speed monitoring that occured recently on Queen Edith's Way for the South Area Committee proved very effective at getting an accurate distribution of speeds over the course of the day and will improve on the anecdotal evidence we currently have. It is hoped that some of this kind of monitoring will now be possible in the East Area.

Speedwatch Latest

East Area Councillors from all parties attended a briefing meeting today about the Speedwatch scheme. There is one 'kit' available for the Cambridge Area (potentially a second next year) It appears Councillors from all three main parties (myself included) have requested that East Area should have first dibs on the new 'Speedwatch' equipment, and this has been agreed by the local community safety partnership. The police representatives outlined how the scheme works:

Prior to use, there will be a training session for volunteers.

Volunteers are responsible for using the equipment (as pictured above), and determine themselves when to monitor road speeds.

Cars passing the speedwatch monitor at more than a preset speed (36mph is the standard for 30mph roads) will cause the monitor to flash up the speed of the car. In this case the volunteer writes down the speed, number plate, car make, and colour.

The information is passed to the police. If the number plate is consistent with the car details, the police write to the registered owner pointing out that they have been seen speeding and asking them not to do it again, but obviously no legal action can be taken.

It was claimed that if the same car was noted on several occasions, then the police could potentially undertake more formal speed checks at the relevant time of day, and the County Council will also use information collected to build up a picture of speeding trouble spots, but in terms of action, that is about it.

I support using this initiative, and would like to see it tried out in Coleridge speeding trouble spots, like Coleridge Road and Birdwood Road. But I'm not about to support Labour's calls for huge numbers of additional cameras to be purchased before we know if the pilot is a success, not least because I have some significant concerns about the scheme.

Firstly, lack of cameras doesn't look like the problem - you need to find volunteers prepared to operate them, and this will take a significant time commitment if it is really going to change motorist behaviour. It is likely that there will be plenty of time to share the equipment, although it will need storing somewhere.

Then there is the quality of data obtained - I don't think the use will be controlled enough to give an objective view of the speeding problem in various areas - we really should be undertaking proper controlled reviews to determine trouble spots, and the Council can already do.

But perhaps my biggest reservation can be summed up by the reaction I've had from more than one person on the doorstep to the scheme - we shouldn't have residents policing and snooping on their neighbours, its the police's job and we pay a lot of tax towards them. The police can stop motorists immediately the offence takes place, and have the authority to issue tickets, or exercise professional judgement and discretion - it really should be down to them to police these problems.

Far too often with traffic problems like those on Hills Road bridge, cyclists without lights and antisocial speeding on residential roads, the police show little or no interest in concerted action over a period of time, just undertaking occasional operations mostly for publicity purposes. For this reason I will doubtless try to add anti-social speeding again to the list of police priorities at the next East Area committee.

That said, Speedwatch could play a role in stopping what is a real problem. The police have volunteered to talk about the Speedwatch scheme prior to the next East Area meeting on 15th January, and I would encourage any local residents who may be interested in setting up a group to come along. Abbey, Coleridge and Romsey ward Councillor's all seemed to want access to the equipment in their area, and the meeting is likely to discuss how it will be used, which might get heated. Cllr Harrison if you are reading - chill, relax, I'm sure we can all play nicely...

Request made for Speedwatch

Following my previous post, I have formally requested that Coleridge is considered as a pilot scheme for the new residents' 'Speedwatch' schemes being started by the police and County Council, specifically in the Coleridge Road and Lichfield Road area. Speeding has been raised as a key issue on these roads when we have been speaking to people on the doorstep, and I think there will be significant support from local residents.

The County Council has confirmed that my request has been received and handed over to Cambridgeshire Constabulary, who are co-ordinating such requests.

Quick off the mark

Labour in Coleridge are always quick off the mark to get their pictures in the paper. For example, here, they are calling for more money to be made available for speed cameras of a type that can be operated by residents.

This refers to a new scheme from the County Council whereby local residents operate speed cameras in conjunction with the police - I think the way it works is those exceeding the speed limit are sent warning letters. A small number of cameras are being made available Countywide for pilot schemes - Labour wants much larger funding committed even before we know if the scheme is going to work.

I think it could be a good idea - a questionnaire on our ward-wide July newsletter asked if any local residents would like to get involved. I can't say I was overwhelmed with volunteers, which to say the least is a problem. Councillors can doubtless be more persistent in persuading people to take part, but ultimately can't (and indeed shouldn't) force them.

(UPDATE: Having spoken to a fair few people on Coleridge Road over the weekend, I think it is fair to say there wouldn't be a problem finding residents to get behind this scheme...)

But the interesting thing about Labour's latest press efforts is the claim: "Cllr Lewis Herbert, who leads the opposition group, and his colleague Cllr Miriam Lynn voted during last week's East Area Committee meeting to give cameras to residents in their wards of Coleridge and Abbey in a bid to combat speeding." which must have come from Labour. Trouble is, I checked the meeting minutes and they did nothing of the sort.

Although funding for cameras was discussed, the only relevant vote I can think they are referring to is actually a vote on an amendment proposed by me to make tackling speeding a local policing priority (in additional to other priorities such as anti-social behaviour in various troublespots etc.) Speeding is a serious problem on many roads in Coleridge (and indeed some roads in Abbey and other wards), but the police really don't seem to take the problem seriously, so I want to make it one of their priorities. Maybe then they will look into why it is some people are prepared to drive often through their own neighbourhood at recklessly fast speeds, and do something about it. Trouble is, one of the Labour City Councillors for Coleridge was absent from the meeting (as was the Coleridge County Councillor), and other Labour members of the committee (who are in the majority) refused to back my amendment, so for the second time running, it wasn't passed.

Speeding is a serious problem in the ward - if my fellow Coleridge Councillors really want to see some action on speeding, perhaps rather than speaking to the press, they could have a word with their colleagues in Petersfield and the like, and make sure they all support my call to make tackling this a police priority in the area.

Complete our latest survey on line

If you are a Coleridge resident, you should shortly be receiving our latest In Touch newsletter.

This month we are including a resident's survey covering two of the key issues in the ward at the moment - speeding and rat-running on residential roads, and crime/anti-social behaviour. We are keen to know your views on these issues, so we can try to persuade the powers that be to take some action.

In particular, as mentioned before, there may be scope for residents action groups to tackle speeding drivers, so we are keen to know if any local residents are interested in this idea and would like to help take it forward.

On crime and anti-social behaviour, we are concerned about under-reporting of problems, and want to make sure that the police and City Council are fully aware of all the problems so they can direct appropriate resources.(We will be discussing all the problems noted with the police, anonymously unless you are happy to let the police know who is reporting the problems). And the police are also trying to restart neighbourhood watch schemes, so we are keen to hear from residents interested in getting involved in this.

For the first time in Coleridge, the survey is available online at http://survey.quorate.org/coleridgejuly2008

The resident's survey is intended for Coleridge residents, but if you are elsewhere in the City and have strong views on the issues, please feel free to fill in the survey and we will try to follow up the issues.

County Initiatives set to help Coleridge

At a briefing yesterday for Councillors in the City from the Conservative run County Council, a couple of initiatives were mentioned that should be good news for Coleridge.

The first is that following a pilot scheme in St Neots, the County Council trading standards department in association with the police has launched a Community Alcohol partnership in Cambridge to tackle underage drinking, and Coleridge is one of the three wards set to benefit. The aim is to get the various parties tackling underage drinking to work together to stop the problems. There will be work with retailers to stop under 18s buying alcohol. However, it was shocking to discover that many underage drinkers discovered by the police get their alcohol from adults and even their parents. So as well as involving the police to crack down on underage drinking in public, the the new campaign also involves education in schools and communication of the problems to adults.

The other initiative of interest was the suggestion that the Council could support community anti-speeding groups, who can hopefully monitor problem roads, identify drivers going to fast, which could either result in advice being issued by the police, or more targetted police enforcement action. I have long been disappointed with police response to the problems of speeding on various roads in the ward, and the inflexibility and cost of many of the proposed solutions to the problem such as traffic calming or fixed cameras - a community based approach could encourage more drivers to behave responsibly on their local roads.

Both these initiatives should have the ability to target action on those who aren't being responsible and are causing problems, and I fully support them.