CAMPAIGNERS are angry at plans being shelved to bring in 20mph zones in built-up areas around Herefordshire.

The county’s 20’s Plenty for Us campaign co-ordinator Professor John Whitelegg said that without this, “residents are exposed to a greater risk of death and injury in road crashes”, and has called on the the Conservative-led council to press on with the plan.

“Nearly 30 million people in England alone live in authorities like Cornwall, Oxfordshire and Lancashire that now have 20mph in areas where people live,” he said.

With a lengthy academic career focussing on transport and planning, Professor Whitelegg has also been the Green’ Party’s sustainable development spokesperson and a councillor in Lancaster.

There he was involved in moves to bring in 20mph zones as far back as 2011, which he says was “sensitively done, with lots of exceptions”.

In March the previous government launched a “crackdown on unfair enforcement and blanket 20mph limits”, following a public backlash against such moves.

Labour has now said that such decisions are to be left to English local authorities, while Wales has drawn back from its nationwide move in September 2023 to bring in 20mph limits across built-up areas, handing back to councils the power to decide where to keep these.

But Professor Whitelegg claimed the Welsh move had proved its value, with 29 per cent fewer road casualties in the first six months after the default 20mph was brought in.

New leader of the Green group on Herefordshire Council, Diana Toynbee, said: “We are disappointed about the sidelining of the 20mph zones, when they are so evidently beneficial for residents, air quality and road safety, and when a motion was passed by Herefordshire Council (backing them) in March 2020.”

A Welsh Government-commissioned study in Wales earlier this year actually found no evidence that it had improved air quality there, however.

Meanwhile, a Herefordshire Council spokesperson confirmed that the county-wide project “has been put on hold due to a review of approach”.

But a second, Government-funded project in Hereford around some schools and colleges was “ongoing”