CALSTOCK Parish Councillors have issued support to the proposition of a third speed camera on the A390, following two new sets at St Ann’s Chapel and Whiterocks proving effective in curbing speeding.

At the most recent Calstock Parish Council meeting last Tuesday evening (August 8), the suggestion for a third camera was favoured, proposed to be located at at Drakewalls, between the Co-Op and the junior school; residents have spoken with councillors concerned that some motorists are continuing to speed on this section of the road not located within the new cameras’ range.

Speaking at the meeting, Cllr John Wells said: “I’ve had an awful lot of people getting in touch about speeding in Drakewalls, as well as conversations with staff and customers in the Co-Op who are concerned with road safety.

“I’ve asked the Police and Crime Commissioner for actual costings of new speed cameras now as our police speedwatch coordinator has told me they’ve come down significantly. When we started a committee on the A390 five years ago the cameras were £70,000 to £80,000 each, now I’m told they’re around £40,000 and we have money left in our pot.”

Dorothy Kirk, Cornwall Councillor for Calstock, secured £200,000 from the (now former) Caradon Community Network two years ago, to be spent on projects enhancing the parish, a sum councillors agreed should be used to acquire speed-calming measures on the A390. Data published by road safety partnership Vision Zero South West in June revealed that the two new sets of bidirectional speed cameras had caught 744 speeders on the 30mph stretch of road in their first seven to 15 days of operation, with the highest speed recorded by one being 73mph. Cllr Wells confirmed he has requested futher data from the cameras totalling the number of offenders identified to date.

On the process of making plans for a third speed camera a reality, Cllr Wells said: “We hope to resume discussions and begin negotiations with Cornwall Council and highways contractor Cormac in September. The idea has not yet been proposed to them and needs their approval to begin the process, which can take up to a year.”

For the time being, a third speed camera remains no more than a supported idea — not a definite guarantee.Cllr Wells added: “I’ve asked our speedwatch team for a risk assessment and approval for another location between Co-Op and the school as an interim measure. Speedwatch itself is also proving very effective. People quickly take to social media to notify others when we’re out.The number of people we report each session has dropped radically from 12-15 an hour when we started last October to about four or five. What makes these numbers more remarkable is that traffic figures seem to be higher than ever. One day last week between 3.30-4.30pm we recorded 837 cars passing our monitoring point near Central Motors, contrasting with Cornwall Council’s figures from 2016 which stated we only have 1,296 going through the village in a day.”

In a further bid to eliminate speeding from the parish, Cllr Wells is currently assessing a range of other new sites at which speedwatch sessions can be conducted and will be proposing these online in due course, to then be approved by the speedwatch group coordinator.