Simon Fell MP for Barrow and Furness hosted a meeting on Tuesday (13 February) at The King Alfred on Walney to address local speeding concerns, particularly on Ocean Road, Carr Lane and North Scale amongst other areas. He was joined by roads policing unit Inspector Jack Stabler, Police Sergeant Paul Holmes from the Barrow Neighbourhood Policing Team, Deputy Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner, Mike Johnson, Traffic Management Leader at Westmorland and Furness Council, Mo Tarkesh Dooz as well as Walney councillors, Frank Cassidy, Therese Assouad and Anita Husband.

The event was well attended by residents, and it was fruitful to listen to their concerns, and talk about how the Council and Police can address them – improving measures to prevent speeding and to get speed limits reviewed too.

The Council said they were committed to ensuring road safety and improving current measures though they are constrained by budgets and funding. They said that they can only implement measures based on accident rates, data and other factors in order to prioritise locations which need improvement. They are willing to help in any way they can, and public requests would be considered to see how they can improve the situation further. They understood that some speed measures may need further review due to being set many years ago. When addressing speeding concerns, Mr Dooz said that to make improvements the Council need to consider three factors: the driver (the human element), the vehicle, and the road alignment.

The Police shared new, innovative plans to help improve speeding issues which have worked well elsewhere and hope to work with the public to implement some of these measures. They have been running operations since 2016 and continue to work as part of the road safety partnership to ensure the implementation of measures to reduce issues such as speeding. There are three levels of solutions the police can work with: in the short-term, they can deploy a speed camera, in the medium-term, they can continue to review existing measures and create a community speed watch group and finally, engineering will form part of the long-term solution.

Commenting, Mr. Fell said:

“The evening was productive with an open discussion about the problems faced across the island, but also what solutions the Council and Police can deliver to improve the situation – whether that is speeding, anti-social behaviour, or inappropriate speed limits. I am very grateful to the residents who kept the pressure up to get this meeting together.

“Going forward I am asking residents who were at the meeting, and those who could not attend to email me at simon.fell.mp@parliament.uk on three key issues:

1. If you are interested in joining a community speed watch group
2. If you wish to see the speed limits on Carr Lane and Biggar Village reviewed
3. If you want North Scale to be reviewed for new speeding measures (e.g. speed bumps)

“Then I will feed this information back to Mo and Jack at the Council and the Police respectively to ensure what was discussed is acted upon and that speeding will improve on Walney Island.”