THE police inspector for Launceston, Bude, Camelford and Callington told a meeting this week he wanted to work with volunteers to develop a community speedwatch initiative in Launceston, writes Amy Dennis.

Inspector Lynden Hughes spoke at a meeting of Launceston’s Community Network Panel at the Guildhall on Monday night.

Insp Hughes said: “A lot of areas in Launceston do have speeding issues. The way I see it going forward — I want to work with you to develop a team of speedwatch volunteers to cover the whole of the area. A team of people that would have responsibility for looking after those key areas within Launceston and the surrounding areas that are causing you concern. I would provide a local point of contact to those volunteers.”

He explained the trained volunteers would go out with a speed detection gun, make note of the speed of any speeding vehicles, and submit this to an online database the police can access.

He added: “If they are over the speed limit in that area it would generate a letter to the registered keeper advising them at such and such a time on such and such a date, they were over the speed limit.”

The data can also be passed on to Cornwall Council for their analysis ‘of where issues are’.

Repeated letters would enable a police officer to be deployed to the location to try and catch the individual and give them a ticket.

There have been some successes around the county, with Whitstone as an example. There, Insp Hughes explained as a result of data obtained and pressure from the primary school, a 40mph speed limit was reduced to 30mph.

Insp Hughes said: “It does work. A lot of these small villages can suffer from speeding.”

He added: “It’s dependent on volunteers. We do need to have committed, dedicated people. You are out in all weathers. You do get abuse from people driving past.

“My resources, they are stretched and we have got to prioritise. We do see speeding as a priority and I will put my resources to it but we need to in a more focused way than we did when we started in Bude.” Bude introduced speedwatch to Devon and Cornwall Police in 2007.

The meeting heard from two representatives of a Liskeard community speedwatch group, formed in 2009. It has a team of four people — the maximum number of people that can carry out speedwatch on a site.

One of the representatives said: “We find that it has really had an effect. The number that are caught speeding each time we go out has reduced considerably. We very often come back with none but we average about four or five in the hour, which really is excellent.

“Considering what it was like when we started, it really is an effective scheme. We have got 17 sites we rotate around. We try and visit all the sites through the year.

“We do it because we enjoy it. We’re just silly old duffers that get together and have a good chat! After, we go back to the police station, have a cup of coffee and set the world to rights. People have stopped and said we don’t speed in Liskeard because we don’t know if you are going to be around the corner!

“We do get abuse, we do get hand gestures. You have got to have a bit of a hard skin. If you report it to the police they will actually visit them and take action.”

The group started off with a small cohort of sites and as complaints of speeding where made known to them, other sites were identified.

Sites have to be approved by police and speedwatch volunteers have to be accompanied initially by a force safety officer before they can ‘go it alone’. This is because the site has to be assessed as safe for volunteers to stand there with speedguns.

The Liskeard speedwatch has won an award three times for its work since 2009.

Detailing the other steps the volunteers would have to go through before a community speedwatch is set up, Inspector Hughes said: “It isn’t a quick process. It’s not going to be instant. There are these steps we have to go through. I will commit to you my resources to set it up.”

Darren Jeffery, representing a group of residents from Daw’s House, said their area does not ‘have a footpath at all’, adding: “Schoolchildren have to walk on the road to go on the school bus. Speeding is a very big issue there. We don’t have safe areas for people to stand and do speedwatch. We have been told in the past it’s unsafe for people to come and erect monitoring boxes or service the cameras.

“What happens when you have somewhere with 30mph that doesn’t have safe refuges for people to stand to do speedwatch?”

Insp Hughes said ‘it’s difficult because we are not going to put people in areas where they are at risk’. He said the police approach is ‘engage, educate, engineer and enforce’ and suggested Cornwall Council could look at ‘engineering the issue out’ at Daw’s House.

He added: “That particular area sounds like an engineering issue. We have got to go into this knowing we will never solve speeding. We can diminish it, but we can never eliminate it.”

Andy Stevenson, Cornwall Council, who has worked in Highways for around 30 years, said: “I recognise all the issues that you have described and sadly they are not unique. Sometimes perception is slightly different to reality and when you go and monitor speed, they are not quite as high as people think they are.

“One of the things that tends to slow vehicles down is a lack of width or a perceived lack of width. One way to slow traffic down is to take the centre line out.”

He said there is a vehicle activated sign at one entrance to Daw’s House and that perhaps another one could be put the other side.

Launceston resident David Perry told the meeting he lived on the continent for a number of years and his job took him all over Europe.

He said: “In Holland they put [speed cameras] in the wheelie bins, and they are quite severe in their punishment. Third or fourth offenders have their car taken away and crushed! They don’t have a permissive attitude and they enforce it quite rigorously.

“I would like to see here in my home country a more aggressive approach.”

Insp Hughes told Mr Perry he was ‘preaching to the converted’ and said once a police officer has been to their first fatal road collision ‘it will remain with you for 30 years’.

Mr Stevenson said there is the proposal for some money from Cornwall Council for each community network panel to ‘undertake some local schemes that may be of mutual benefit to everybody on the panel’. “It would seem to me something like a speedwatch might be something that’s beneficial to a whole group of communities,” he added.

Chairman of the panel, Cornwall Councillor for Stoke Climsland Neil Burden, said this money for the panel would amount to £50,000, understood to be available from April 1.

It was asked that parish representatives who are interested in being involved in a community speedwatch scheme feed back to their parishes, so the network panel can then collate that information.