Dear Resident,

Askham Bryan Parish Council is pleased to let you know that North Yorkshire Police are making £190,000 worth of funding available for local Road Safety projects within the county, the overall project being known as the ‘AJ1 Project Road Safety Fund’.

Local and parish councils can apply for up to a maximum of £20,000 of funding for road safety projects within their parishes.

Askham Bryan Parish Council have long been aware of the concerns of residents over speeding traffic in the village. A village wide survey undertaken in 2018 showed that from ninety two returns 92% of residents had concerns over traffic speeds.  Also in 2018 the 95Alive Road Safety Partnership undertook official speed data collection and their analysis confirmed that we had a speeding problem.  Unofficial data from the Community Speed Watch operation showed some vehicles were entering and leaving the village at speeds of over 50mph, this being largely ‘rat run’ traffic.

In 2018 the Parish Council formally requested speed limit reductions on the two main access roads into the village, which currently stand at 60mph.  There has been no progress by Highways on this.  

The Parish Council met recently and voted to approve an application for funding to help address this problem.  We intend to make an application for the funding of 2 Vehicle Activated Speed signs (VAS).  These are the signs you may have seen in neighbouring villages where vehicles travelling above the legal speed limit (our legal limit is 30mph) have their speeds illuminated by the sign.  Other speed reduction measures such as chicanes are proving difficult to achieve and the VAS are a viable and largely unobtrusive method of tackling our speeding problem.
The battery operated version of the signs are easily re-locatable and could therefore be used at a number of locations within the village, as and when residents express concern.  The VAS also capture data for analytical purposes and one Parish Council reported a 24% reduction in the highest speed in just one month of operation.  We are aware that a number of nearby villages intend to make similar applications.  

There is no guarantee that our application will be successful but the purpose of this communication is that whilst the Parish Council is preparing to make the application for the funding, we will only do so with sufficient community support.  We would really welcome your feedback.

Information on VAS by a supplier can be found here:
https://www.messagemaker.co.uk/products/vehicle-activated-speed-signs-vas/