Council response

In terms of the consultation element of the scheme, delivering direct mail to each of the 80,000 + properties within Phase 1 and Phase 2 of the scheme would have been very costly, not to mention that it would not be the environmentally conscious option. Therefore, it was agreed that press releases, social media alerts, public notices in the newspaper and displayed throughout each of the areas and a dedicated section on Wirral Council’s website would be sufficient to meet the consultation requirements of Section 7 of The Local Authorities’ Traffic Orders (Procedure) (England and Wales) Regulations 1996. The public notices in the newspaper and on site are the statutory legal part of the process. The regulations also direct a minimum 21-day statutory consultation period for TRO schemes such as this, however, the council decided to extend this to 28 days for these particular schemes, to give extra time for feedback.
The formal public consultation exercise is a statutory legal requirement of the scheme and is not a vote on whether a proposed scheme should be progressed or not. The consultation period is where issues might be raised of which officers are unaware. However, if known and expected concerns are raised, officers can sometimes try and mitigate those concerns, but this is not always possible. All feedback from the consultation for the various phases of the scheme has been or will be reported to the Environment, Climate Emergency and Transport Committee for consideration.

It is important to note that the public consultation is not representative of the overall population but provides information on the opinion only of those residents who engaged. For context, the areas contained within Phase 1 of the scheme included approximately 50,000 properties and in excess of 150,000 residents / commercial business owners. Approximately 1,000 people provided feedback with roughly 1/3 of those being supportive and 2/3 raising concerns.
Many cities and towns in the UK have introduced widespread 20mph speed limits, including neighbouring authorities in Liverpool, Sefton, Warrington and Cheshire West and Chester. Wirral is similar in nature to those areas.
20mph will mainly apply on residential streets, and in selected locations on main roads. Most main roads will keep their existing 30mph or 40mph speed limits and 50mph or 60mph in rural areas, so once drivers leave residential area 20mph Speed Limits and join the main road network, which is better suited to carry higher levels of traffic, there should be little to no impact on journey times. The parts of any journey affected would only be the relatively short sections of that journey that would be on 20mph roads in order to reach the main road network. A recent monitoring report from the first eight settlement areas introducing as default 20mph in Wales found that there was a minimal impact on journey times. This can be explained by the fact that overall point-to-point speeds in most urban areas are determined by delays at junctions and signals rather than the speed limit on the sections of roads between them. For the majority of the day, it is rare for vehicles in towns and cities to reach 30mph for more than one or two minutes before they are slowed by queuing vehicles or red signals.
Introducing the lower speed limit aims to provide benefits for all road users, not just vulnerable school children. Also, children only spend a small amount of their time at school, and we would like to introduce measures that will protect them at other times also, within the places that they live, socialise, and play etc.

The introduction of 20mph speed limits is most beneficial in residential, shopping and school locations and therefore each of the 52 proposal areas has been chosen based on the makeup of those areas and type of amenities present, as well as considering current collision data. Main roads, also known as A and B roads, are to keep their current speed limit and not be changed to 20mph unless it, or parts of it, run through local centres, such as residential areas, schools, shopping places, leisure facilities, hospitals etc.