Who are we?
We are residents of the village who share a concern about the road safety within the village – both for road and footpath users. We are open to anyone and are non-political.
What do we do?
We actively monitor road safety issues around the village and collect road safety concerns voiced by villagers:
- From individuals – often from reports on Timsbury Rocks! and in the village Newsletter.
- From groups in the village
- From residents in specialized accommodation eg The Cheshire Home, The Laurels
Then we work in partnership with other organisations to seek solutions and feed proposals to the Parish Council through its Streets & Safety Committee, and ultimately to BathNES Highways team if need be.
How do we work?
We have regular, minuted meetings held at Greenhill House (Timsbury Cheshire Home) and other places
The issue is identified by a group or individual,
– we look at the implications of the issue
– we carry out further research or collect relevant data
– we add our support and contact the appropriate organisation to try to seek a solution.
– we regularly publicise our activities.
Live Topics
We mainly post these in summary on this village page.
Join us or send your comments on these issues via the Webmaster.
Timsbury Road Safety Group Annual report 2017
2017 has seen significant changes with the Timsbury Road Safety Group. The group has decided that there is no longer the need for regular meetings. When the Road Safety Group was initially formed there was no Streets and Safety Sub Committee of the Parish Council and road safety was not considered to be such a problem.
Now there is a Streets and Safety Sub Committee of the Parish Council there is some confusion as to the roles of this committee and that of The Timsbury Road Safety Group.
The Timsbury Road Safety Group was open for any resident to join and was a voice for any resident to raise road safety issues.
One of our first activities was to improve communications with the Highways Dept of BANES which lead to a survey of footways around the village. This resulted in an increase of dropped kerbs and a clearance of overhanging foliage in the village. These actions facilitated movement around the village for those people in wheelchairs.
We carried out a range of research projects eg speeding in South Road. We campaigned and organised a petition to try to get BANES to extend the gritting route from Greenvale to the Cheshire Home. Unfortunately we did not succeed with this particular issue but we did persuade the Cheshire Home to allow gritting vehicles to turn around on their premises and to put up motion-activated lighting to aid the gritting vehicle to turn around at night time. Unfortunately the weather has not supported us in that we have not had any snow for the last 2 years!!
We have succeeded in getting more grit bins sited at appropriate places and have worked with the Dog Warden to have rubbish bins sited at the end of most pathways so “rubbish” can be easily disposed of!
We have implemented strategies for the collection of evidence of accidents in the village to demonstrate the need for action. Of course all these things need the support of the Timsbury residents to be really effective and this has not always happened! The Road Safety Group has also been called on to support and give evidence to the campaign to stop the inappropriate building of houses
Timsbury Road Safety Group worked very hard with the Parish Council and Coop to devise and implement the North Road Traffic Management plan ie the loading bay, the use of double yellow and white lines. When drivers comply with the plan it works well and it is safer so it is up to all of us to try to make North Road safer for villagers. Unfortunately we have not been able to persuade Cllr Clarke, BANES Cabinet member for Transport to support the installation of a raised crossing at the end of Chapel Walk. However the Streets and Safety Committee will not stop trying!
The most recent action has been to work with the Parish Council and BANES to implement the 20 mph restrictions around the village. This was something that 80% of villagers requested when they completed and returned their village plan in 2009.
So when we look back at what the Timsbury Road Safety Group has achieved it would be fair to say that we have been very effective. Although we have agreed not to hold regular meetings we are still in existence but our main role would be to work very closely with the Streets and Safety Sub Committee as and when required.
The group co-ordinator is Sheila Clarke who can be contacted on sheila.clarke65@tesco.net