This stretch of London Road is heavily used by pedestrians. A school sits nearby, and the Almshouses are directly opposite. Children walk this route daily, and elderly residents often cross slowly.
The combination of speed, poor visibility, and vulnerable
pedestrians makes a serious accident not just possible, but likely.
Many residents have videos/photos of the dreadful crashes - all of
which we are happy to share.
This ePetition ran from 19/05/2026 to 19/08/2026 and has now finished.
13 people signed this ePetition.
Thank you for your petition received on 20 August 2026 regarding
your request for the
implementation of traffic calming measures on London Road,
Westerham. In
accordance with our 'Petition Service', as your letter contains
less than 750 signatures,
I have investigated and reviewed your concerns in my role as the
Cabinet Member for
Highways and Transport.
You may be interested to learn that, a number of years ago, Kent
County Council's
(KCC) Highway Improvements Team implemented a Highway Improvement
Plan (HIP)
process with local Parish and Town Councils and County Members.
This affords
Highway Officers the opportunity to work closely with elected
representatives to ensure
that a community voice helps to prioritise their efforts for
highway improvements at
locations that do not achieve sufficient priority through the
countywide assessments
(based on evidenced collision data).
This is pertinent as Highway Officers are currently engaged with
Westerham Town
Council and have been working with them on their highway
improvement priorities for
the area, including their shared concerns of speeding, with
associated accidents and
damage to properties, and request for improved signage and traffic
calming along
London Road.
As a result, the Highway Improvements Team undertook a review of
London Road,
including current vehicle speeds and collision history, to
determine whether or not
physical traffic calming measures would be a suitable/justifiable
engineering measure
to address the concerns being raised at this location.
Traffic surveys (in the form of two tubes that lay across the road)
over a 7-day period
(24/7) were carried out in both the 20mph and 30mph sections of
London Road to
establish traffic volumes and speeds along the road. These recorded
average speeds
within the 20mph section of road of 23.6mph northbound and 22.3mph
southbound and
average speeds within the 30mph section of road of 31.3mph
northbound and 29.8mph
southbound. In addition, and noting your concerns of collisions
along London Road,
Officers have advised that in the past three years Kent Police has
informed KCC of two
slight and two serious personal injury collisions that occurred
between the roundabout
with the A233 Beggars Lane and Vicarage Hill. However, only one of
these collisions
was attributed, in part, to the driver exceeding the speed limit,
with drug impairment
also noted as a contributory factor. Typically, there is a
six-month delay from the time
when a crash occurs to when the data is shared with KCC by Kent
Police; current data
is available up to 1 April 2026.
Given the varying nature of the collisions at this location, this
would generally not
indicate a pattern that could easily be addressed by engineering
measures and is why,
to date, we have had to target our finite resources to delivering
Crash Remedial
Measures in other parts of the county where a pattern of crashes is
occurring.
Solutions such as physical traffic calming for example are only
considered where
there is evidence of speeding (average speeds 10% + 2mph above the
posted speed
limit) which does not appear to be the case along London Road .
Physical traffic
calming has also been found to be unpopular in residential areas
and on bus routes
such as this as speed bumps in particular can be very noisy and
cause vibrations to
nearby properties. They are also cost prohibitive and are only
likely to be achievable
should a bid for Local Transport Plan (LTP) funding be successful.
Each Autumn/Winter
KCC's Highway Improvements Team has the opportunity to bid for LTP
funding for
schemes which do not necessarily meet other criteria but are deemed
high priority
across the county, and a real advantage to the community. However,
each location
must be prioritised for LTP funding against other schemes being bid
for across the
county and, given existing speeds, it is unlikely that this
location would be prioritised for
LTP funding over other schemes being bid for across the county
where there is a
recorded speeding issue.
However, the Highway Improvements Team is in the process of
designing a scheme
to enhance the existing signage within the 20mph speed limit with
carriageway
roundels. Unfortunately, it is not possible to replicate this work
in the 30mph section of
road as the northern end of London Road is 30mph by virtue of
streetlighting. Section
82 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 defines a road that has
a system of street
lighting as being a restricted road. The presence of lighting
therefore means that a road
automatically has a speed limit of 30mph with the lamps taking the
place of repeater
signs and is why KCC is prohibited from erecting 30mph repeater
signs.
I note in your petition that you also make a request for
consideration to be given to
traffic calming cameras. At KCC we receive hundreds of requests
each year for
speed/safety cameras, but it is not possible to install cameras at
all requested sites.
Installation of Safety Cameras in Kent & Medway is managed by
the Kent and Medway
Safety Camera Partnership (KMSCP) and the policy that the
Partnership adheres to,
along with the key criteria it follows when considering a site, is
outlined on their website
at Camera criteria - Kent & Medway Safety Camera Partnership
(kmscp.co.uk) .
Fixed safety cameras are probably the most requested form of camera
enforcement,
and these can be installed where three or more people have been
killed or seriously
injured in speed-related crashes, over a 1.5km stretch of road, in
the three years prior
to installation. Alternatively, they can also be considered where
there has been a
history of speed-related crashes at single sites or along a route
where a robust
investigation by KCC, as Highway Authority, has determined a safety
camera to be the
most appropriate measure to mitigate evidenced crashes.
Given the aforementioned collision history along London Road, I am
afraid that this
location would not meet the criteria for installation of a safety
camera. I do understand
that there will always be a small number of drivers that do not
adhere to the speed limit
and these instances should be reported to Kent Police on their
non-emergency number
101 or online at http://www.kent.police.uk/ro/report
to enforce under their existing powers.
Thank you for taking the time to raise a petition and bringing your
concerns to my
attention. I really value a community voice to flag up local
concerns based on their
knowledge and experience of the roads and footways in their area
and I trust that you
find the above information useful.
Yours sincerely,
Peter Osborne
Cabinet Member for Highways & Transport
County Councillor for Hythe West Division
Kent County Council