Nichola Harrison

Success in securing funding from the County Council for an accident reduction scheme along Mill Rd means that Nichola is pressing County Council officials to make progress with the promised public consultation. She believes that any scheme will succeed only if local residents and businesses are fully involved in the design.

It seems likely that the options will include a 20mph limit, and Council officers are looking at what additional measures will induce traffic to obey the speed limit. Traditional traffic calming measures such as humps, bumps and chicanes may not be suitable in this very busy and complex street, and the Council has been investigating whether the so-called Watchman scheme  (www.watchmanltd.co.uk) might work. This would involve a number of cameras (up to a dozen along the length of Mill Rd) which take pictures speeding vehicles and trigger an advisory letter to the offender from the police and/or council. The cameras can also take overview pictures at junctions etc, which can be used for road safety education campaigns and to help highway engineers understand the behaviour of road users at accident blackspots.

Watchman operates in Tameside, Great Manchester, where it is said to work well. However, Council officers have not yet decided whether they feel able to recommend it to the Petersfield community. And an informal consultation carried out by Nichola last year does suggest that some residents don’t like the idea of cameras, because of concerns about ‘Big Brother’ surveillance  and the visual intrusion in the streetscene.

As Nichola said recently to the Cambridge News, “Mill Road is very special. The dreadful accident record here means that something must be done to improve safety, but this must not be at the cost of the physical environment or the community spirit of the street. The Council must take care to find out whether people in Petersfield and Romsey want this scheme. It will only be successful if it is welcomed and respected by the local community.”

Nichola has asked for the public consultation to take place in the autumn.

Mill Road has seen around 180 injury accidents over the last 5 years and contains the 3rd and 4th worst accident clusters in the whole of Cambridgeshire.