I have recently been contacted by a constituent in Bilsborrow requesting speed enforcement on the A6 southbound through the village, advising that vehicles are passing at 60mph past Bilsborrow John Cross Church of England Primary School.
Last July following the election one of my first actions as the new MP for Bilsborrow was to ask for a pedestrian crossing on the A6 in the village. I am pleased that in principle Lancashire County Council support the measure, but won’t use existing funding and will only consider this with more housing development.
Despite the Government’s £46.8m funding to Lancashire County Council for road maintenance, the council maintain their policy of only reviewing action on road safety where there has been a fatality, which I think is completely backwards and is a reactive policy with no regard for prevention.
Similarly with concerns about speeding, when I approached LCC recently they told me that they have discontinued use of their electronic speeding board signs (SPIDs). Instead, they have suggested that local town/parish councils pay to buy these boards. I find this alarming, as residents’ parish council precepts should go on community activities, not for road safety monitoring which they already pay tax for to LCC as the highways authority – it means residents are being charged twice.
Despite my misgivings on double-taxation of speeding measures for residents by LCC, I have had some success recently in working with Hambleton Parish Council to place a SPID on Sandy Lane, and Preesall Town Council in placing SPIDs on the Knott-End Esplanade which both experience frustrating levels of speeding where the county council refuse to take action. With this in mind, I have reached out to Myerscough & Bilsborrow Parish Council to offer my support on any SPID use or road safety measure they would like to see, which I hope may provide some form of solution to perhaps monitor and collect data on the situation, and if they can use local funding to do this.
I have also written to Lancashire County Council to ask what speed enforcement they can deliver, and you can read my letter to them below:
UPDATE: 29/04/2025
I have received a response from Lancashire County Council advising that there have not been enough casualties in the village, or enough speed data here to justify new road safety measures, but that they have received new Government funding.
I will be pressing the case and hope to gather the strength of feeling from residents to once again push the council into action on this.
