Wales’s blanket 20mph speed limits will be dropped by September, the nation’s new Labour Transport Secretary has said. The Telegraph has more.
Local councils can start raising limits in six months’ time, Ken Skates told the devolved Senedd parliament on Tuesday.
“We all agree 20mph works really well where it matters most. Outside schools, hospitals, heavily built-up areas, where children are coming into contact with motorised vehicles,” he said.
“On certain routes it hasn’t been appropriate. We will move swiftly at the least cost to correct that.”
Public consultations will start imminently, Mr. Skates said, with councils handed powers to formally raise speed limits back to 30mph from the summer.
Natasha Asghar, a Welsh Conservative member of the Senedd, told the debating chamber: “I appreciate you’re speeding up the review.
“Nothing is changing as of today.”
Last September, Wales became the first country in the U.K. to reduce the default speed limit from 30mph to 20mph in built-up areas.
Lowering the limit cost £34 million, according to the House of Commons’ library, with lower default speed restrictions applying to about a third of all roads in Wales.
The new limit was introduced by Lee Waters, the Welsh Transport Minister at the time, on Sept 17th.
Mr. Waters narrowly survived a no-confidence motion tabled by the Welsh Conservatives that month but announced he was stepping down in March.
Posting on X, formerly known as Twitter, at the time of his departure, he said: “I now get a pile of malign comments for even the most innocuous posts.”
He also conceded there were a number of roads across Wales that should have remained at 30mph instead of being subject to his blanket speed limit. …
A Government source said: “Labour’s blanket 20mph limits Wales have been a fiasco, but their ideological ban on road building and plans for road charging still remain in place.”
Turns out, 20 isn’t plenty.