I am disappointed but not surprised by the response from the Chairman of Cambridgeshire County Council's Highways Committee, Cllr Alex Beckett, to the recent petition which asked for a review of Ely's 20mph zone.
In a nutshell, Cllr Beckett says: we followed the correct process, we will review the impacts in 24 months time.
A win of sorts I suppose. But Cllr Becket's response fails to deal with the reasonable and proportionate requests of the signatories to the petition, and it fails to set out how the review will be undertaken.
The petition was signed by 2775 people, which was nearly 23 times the number of people that supported the idea of the blanket 20mph zone in the original consultation. What has incensed people about this whole affair, more than anything, is the way in which it was done.
The Liberal Democrats are leading the County Council, and it was them who promoted the idea of 20mph zones, but they can't seem to understand what the problem is - "But we put it in our leaflets" they say.
Official consultation on changes to the highway is not carried out by political parties and cannot be a race to see who can get most people to back their side of the debate. Public consultation has to be impartially and properly carried out and should be a genuine exercise in garnering the views of local residents to help shape proposals. A change of this magnitude deserved some effort by the County Council in promoting it, surely?
Sadly, the consultation was incredibly poorly promoted by the County Council and it was in no way a genuine attempt to get the views of local residents and to shape the proposals based on the feedback. It was simply an exercise in ticking the box on the statutory consultation and then implementing the scheme anyway.
The Liberal Democrats are leading the County Council and are therefore responsible for the poor effort that this was. They also had an opportunity, with the presentation of the petition, to respond to the outcry about it, and to show they are listening, but they have chosen to all but ignore everyone who took the trouble to sign their name.
Arrogant and dismissive doesn't even begin to describe it.
