The County Council routinely monitors injury accident statistics across the whole county to identify where to prioritise resources for accident investigation studies which may ultimately result in a Local Safety Scheme being implemented, which could include traffic calming measures. I should like to clarify that the County Council uses only the road accident data recorded by the police. This is recorded in detail in a nationally consistent way and includes only those accidents where a person is injured. They are classified as fatal, serious or slight depending upon the severity of injuries sustained. It is generally accepted that for every accident involving injury reported to the police, there are likely to be a number of damage-only accidents or near miss incidents which go unrecorded. It is sobering to realise that around 3000 casualties occur annually on Norfolk’s roads and the County Council must target its limited resources at the worst accident locations.

We have checked the accident record through Hempnall and it shows that there have been 5 slight injury accidents recorded within the village in the last 3 years, 3 on B1527 and 2 on The Street. None of the accidents involved pedestrians or cyclists. Whilst all accidents are regrettable, this level of accidents with low overall accident severity would not lead us to provide physical traffic calming as a Local Safety Scheme. One alternative possibility may be a Parish Partnership or Member Funded scheme to provide additional features that could have an impact on through traffic, although as a main distributor B class road any measures introduced would need to strike an appropriate balance between reducing traffic speeds and maintaining traffic movement.

Regarding the request to consider traffic calming being a condition of planning application 2019/0864 for the HEM1 site we would comment as follows:

The Highway Authority would support a requirement for the developer to provide a 20mph limit within the centre of the village, and a new vehicular activated sign as part of any suitable future development. Should the local planning authority accept the principle of the development, the Highway Authority would support a requirement for the developer to implement a 20mph speed limit focussed within the centre of the village (encompassing the site access and access to the village hall, the double bends between the site and The Street and the school). Given the nature of the network along this section, with the B1527 subject to a series of bends coupled with the narrow-constrained carriageway along The Street, subject to the provision of conspicuous gateways a ‘signed only’ 20mph speed limit is considered to be viable. In addition, we would also support the erection of a vehicular activated sign on Mill Road on the Westbound approach to the village to promote a greater level of compliance to the existing 30 mph limit.