Hello everyone, 

We hope that you, your family and your friends remain safe and well.

On Tuesday 18th August 2020 Representatives from the Moorfield Action Group were invited to attend a meeting organised by Cheshire Police, with Halton Borough Council also being invited. This is the first time in 3 years of asking, despite numerous requests, that anyone from the council has had the decency to actually meet with us face to face.

When we entered the meeting room, we were shocked to see the amount of Cheshire Police personnel in attendance, which we felt was extremely intimidating. High ranking Road Traffic Officers had been brought in to try and debunk the evidence that the Moorfield Road Action Group had provided as proof of the serious road safety issues.

Widnes Local Policing Unit & Cheshire Police

Superintendent Laura Marler for Cheshire Police started the meeting by praising her own Officers for all their hard work and in particular the speed enforcement carried out on Moorfield Road over the last 6 weeks. The meeting was fully structured around collision data for the past 3 years, stating that there had only been 4 slight RTC’s during this period.

They totally ignored the HBC Traffic Evaluation Reports provided by ourselves, which showed the true level of speeding taking place on Moorfield Road. Senior Road Traffic Officers tried to discredit our speed analysis data at every stage of the meeting. However, quoting Superintendent Laura Marler’s own words previously “The stats don’t lie”, our figures don’t lie either.

Cheshire Police successful Prosecutions on Moorfield Road:

2017 Speeding offences 34

2018 Speeding offences 34

2019 Speeding offences 75

Total over 3 years            143

Traffic Evaluation Reports:

During the period 2017-2019, there were over 1,800,000 vehicles travelling over the speed limit, based on HBC’s own data from the SID on the railway bridge.

Cheshire Police prosecution success rate of 0.0000000079%!

Would you class this as an acceptable success rate or in any way effective?

Street A Week Initiative 4th July 2020

Cheshire Police conducted a door to door survey asking our community what the priority issues were in the area. The majority of people said it was a lack of Police presence and the continued lack of action by Halton Borough Council to address the road safety issues on Moorfield Road. After this event Cheshire Police agreed to undertake an operation to target the area with extra support from the Cheshire Police Road Traffic department. The sustained operation resulted in the following for Cheshire Police;

Only 17 speeding drivers were caught over a 6 week period

Yet over 70,000 vehicles were over the speed limit during that period

This is a success rate of 0.0002428571%

Would you class this as a successful campaign or in any way effective at deterring speeding?

Superintendent Jo Marshall Bell head of Roads & Crime Unit for Cheshire Police said that what her Officers had observed did not correspond with what the local community were saying or what the traffic evaluation reports were showing. This is just one of the many occasions where they were trying to disprove what we were saying.

Halton Borough Council

Mr Tim Gibbs who is the Operational Director of Policy, Planning and Transportation for Halton Borough Council was also present and he is the person who has decided that our community’s safety is not a priority. This is a man who is paid over £105,000 of your Council tax money every year, who feels that traffic flow and money is more important than our safety. This is the man that thinks there are sufficient measures on Moorfield Road and there is not a safety issue, as he stated in the meeting that he is totally unwilling to install any physical traffic calming measures to slow down the high speeders.

Mr Gibbs was asked if he felt that any of the 20 intervention Halton Borough Council had carried out on Moorfield Road has had any impact on the speeding issues, given the fact that the latest Traffic evaluation report had shown that 51.9% of vehicles were exceeding the speed limit. He could not give a definitive answer to this question. It was then pointed out that the majority of interventions were legal obligations / highways maintenance or a result of our community campaigning and bad press articles which had forced their hand. He stated that Halton Borough Council had been pro-active in their intervention but we made it known that we felt that the majority of the work carried out has had no impact of the communities safety.

He was also challenged on his lack of response to emails and phone calls from our local community, the council’s refusal to acknowledge this online petition, the lack of engagement with the action group and why has he ignored the intervention of the former Chief Inspector of the Widnes Local Policing unit, Mr Simon Parsonage and Police Crime Commissioner for Cheshire Mr David Keane. They both feel that the installation of physical traffic calming measures on Moorfield Road is the only long-term solution to speeding traffic and despite their high ranking positions; their opinions and views have been ignored.

Despite our community raising key concerns about the continued danger from excessive speeding, dangerous driving and the misuse by large overweight HGV’s since 2004, this man has decided that no further action is required. However, he will be held accountable for his decision when a serious accident or fatality takes place on Moorfield Road. As a group, we will go public with all our correspondence which has highlighted the serious road safety issues on Moorfield Road which Halton Borough Council have chosen to ignore and act upon.

Mr Gibbs and Halton Borough Council have failed to uphold their duty of care as stated in their own corporate strategy to ensure the safety of local residents on local roads. Both Cheshire Police and Halton Borough Council feel that it is only a small group of people who are involved in this campaign. As a signatory on this online petition we would like to ask you to contact this man directly and make him aware of your observations and views. The more people that contact him and make him aware of the strength of feeling in our community might hopefully change his mind.

Please feel free to email him on the following email address:

Tim.Gibbs@halton.gov.uk

In closing, the Moorfield Action Group will continue to highlight the dangers our community face on a daily basis and will not stop until someone in authority with the power to solve our issues takes action to ensure the safety of our friends, families, neighbours and all in our community.

If any of the recipients to this update have any ideas or suggestions as to how we can further our cause, please contact us at the email address below.

Thank you for your continued support. 

In the meantime everyone take care yourselves and each other!

Contact: moorfieldroadactiongroup@gmail.com