Where’s our 20Mph zones?

Arundels 20Mph zones?.

For the last couple of years I have been telling you about the two large 20Mph zones that were to be created in Arundel Old Town and Arundel New town.

We were promised by number different officers at West Sussex County Council (WSCC) that the zones would be implemented by August 2015 under what is called a TRO (Traffic Regulation order).

Recently WSCC has stopped sending representatives to Arundel town council’s traffic committee, I made representations to the Cabinet Member that they should send someone to update and to their credit they sent one of their senior officers.

So imagine my surprise when I questioned him regarding the date for the implementation of the zones and he stated that were no plans for 20Mph zones.

I took the opportunity to raise the issue at the Joint Downland Area committee (JDAC) just before Christmas,   WSCC said that they were reviewing all plans for TRO’s (Traffic Regulation order) and they could not confirm that anything would be done.

I reacted badly to this lambasting the County Councillors present for the failure of WSCC to keep their promise; I raised the question that if they couldn’t provide 20Mph zones then what were they there for? 

I believe this raises some fundamental questions of how local government is organised in West Sussex, We have three layers of local government, we have the county council which is an old legacy organisation, because of the financial pressures they are hollowing out WSCC, keeping expensive assets like buildings whilst getting rid of front line officers. Which impacts on services and public satisfaction, the net result are things like a fairly inexpensive 20mph zones are sacrificed.

We have the District Council and we have the Town Council,  I believe we need to scrap Districts and the County Council and create small unitary authorities along the lines of Hampshire and Berkshire, we would cut the number of Officers, Councillors and buildings,  making the new organisations more cost effective and relevant.