Hello to all CSW volunteers;
Well I’ve been with the team for over a year now and have completed my first full season of CSW schemes and I wanted to say what a pleasure its been to meet so many enthusiastic and dedicated people.
It has been a very enjoyable and rewarding experience, to see the dedication of community minded volunteers around the county has reinforced my view that schemes that engage with the public are a very worthwhile cause.
Albeit that there have been some frustrating times for the volunteers, normally centred around the question of; ‘what happens now?’ everyone seems to have recognised the effect that CSW has had over the period that it was operating. Between the signage, the overt and varied appearance of the volunteers on the street and the letters to offenders from the police all schemes have had the effect of reducing speed in the target areas.
The benefit of return schemes (24 this year) has been very apparent in some villages where the regular return of volunteers over a period of several years has had the effect of building a level of consistent evidence of speed issues and increased traffic flow. This in turn has helped parish councillors to make a case to highways for reviews of road signage and layouts and for the police to increase the level of enforcement in the areas when CSW schemes have ended.
Some schemes have led to discussions between adjacent villages/parishes to form partnerships regarding road infrastructure issues and in some cases a co-operative approach to the introduction and use of Mobile Vehicle Activated Signs (MVAS).
Alongside the returns we welcomed 9 new schemes in 2015! These schemes benefited from the Covert data that we gathered prior to and after the scheme which in turn starts the build up of accurate data on the speeding issues in the area.
This year saw a few written complaints from ‘offenders’ who felt that they had been unjustly singled out but after investigating the complaints there was no evidence other than that volunteers had operated in the manner they were authorised to. We also had a few incidents where drivers felt the need to have ‘discussions’ with volunteers but again it was very pleasing that most were adequately dealt with by the volunteers who professionally stated the reasons that they were there and declined to ‘rise’ to any of the comments made to them.
Can I please encourage you all to consider continuing with your CSW endeavour’s in 2016 and if you do then get in touch as soon as you can to indicate when you may wish to run a scheme.
Finally on behalf of Mike and myself I would like to wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy new year and I look forward to getting in touch next year.
Chris Bilby
15 December 2015