Road Safety: West Midlands

Debate between Rachel Taylor and Manuela Perteghella

Tuesday 9th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Manuela Perteghella]

I thank the hon. Member for his passionate intervention, and I fully agree with him. I will talk a bit about what is happening in Warwickshire and I hope that Warwickshire colleagues will also intervene and share their experience. I also hope that the Minister will say something about guidance for local authorities, so that they are not just reactive but proactive.

Communities up and down the west midlands want to see proper enforcement and a reduction of speed limits in residential areas, especially where schools are located. My constituency of Stratford-on-Avon is a case in point, where we are left exposed by the Reform-run Warwickshire county council. Parish councils and community watch groups work hard to gather data, but it is incredibly difficult to implement any type of traffic calming measures or speed reduction orders. Often, even if those are agreed, the cost of the proposals falls on parish and town councils. The problem is felt with particular force in rural constituencies like mine.

[Rachel Taylor (North Warwickshire and Bedworth) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for securing this important debate. As a constituency neighbour in Warwickshire, I share her concerns. I have been out with my local Speedwatch groups in Warton and Water Orton.

My constituents in North Warwickshire and Bedworth are fed up of dangerous roads simply being ignored by the Reform-led county council in Warwickshire. From the Woodford Lane junction, Grendon Road in Polesworth, No Man’s Heath Lane in Austrey, Marston Lane in Bedworth and King’s Lane in Newton Regis to Coventry Road in Fillongley, speeding is out of control and the lack of speed cameras is putting lives at risk. Meanwhile, Reform’s record on Warwickshire county council shows that it is spending less money on our roads. Does the hon. Member agree that communities such as mine in Warwickshire deserve safer streets, investment in road infrastructure and action on potholes from local government, not rhetoric about what information children can read in libraries or what flag can be flown from Shire Hall?

[Manuela Perteghella]

I absolutely agree. I would like the county council to focus on what really matters to our residents, rather than spending its first six months in power deciding which flag should fly on which flagpole or talking about other culture war policies. I received an email from a visitor to my constituency who had hit a pothole, which thankfully had not resulted in a crash, but his car had been badly damaged. Now he is in conversation with the county council. This is not good for residents, or for our local visitor economy. The council needs to get a grip on the state of the roads, which obviously contributes to these dangers.

In rural constituencies such as mine, speeding through villages is the norm. Speed limits of 30 mph mean very little when there is no enforcement to back them up. Our country lanes carry cars, lorries, farm vehicles and cyclists, and collision blackspots are all too common. Narrow roads prevent us from having things like chicanes or narrowings, because large farm vehicles obviously need to use the road as well. Street lights are also an issue when we have many dark sky villages. Rural communities feel abandoned due to the lack of police officers and, as the hon. Member for North Warwickshire and Bedworth (Rachel Taylor) just mentioned, the lack of power for local councils, as well as the lack of attention from Government.

I will focus on some locations in my constituency, but the list is not exhaustive. Rather, it is illustrative of the road safety issues that we all have in the west midlands. One example that I want to put on record is the junction where the A422 Banbury Road meets the B4455 Fosse Way, just east of the village of Ettington. Every day, drivers, cyclists, bikers and farm workers navigate a junction that should never have been designed the way it was. I have been calling on the Department to step in and engage with Warwickshire county council to ensure that this junction gets the full safety review and redesign that it so urgently needs. People have already paid the price for the failure to act.

There are many other dangerous junctions, including Oakleigh Road and Justins Avenue, off the Birmingham Road in Stratford-upon-Avon, with residents reporting near-misses and, sadly, crashes too. I have had meetings with National Highways about the Billesley junction on the A46, but we are still waiting for improvements to that junction, where several fatalities have already happened.