HAGLEY residents, and especially residents of Newfield Road, will be interested to hear the results of a traffic survey conducted recently.

Residents were very concerned at the speed of vehicles in Newfield Road,which is used as a rat run between the A491 and the A456 in Hagley and which is without doubttheworst residentialroadfor speeding traffic in the village.

As a result of liaison with County Councillor Ed Moore, Clent Parish councillors, PC Chris Lord and Richard Clewer, senior highways engineer forWorcestershire County Council, a traffic survey was conducted in Newfield Road in the first week of April.

The survey clearly shows more than half the traffic travelling down Newfield Road is breaking the speed limit and in a 24- hour period, 410 vehicles out of 772 were travelling fast enough to earn points on their licence.

Hopefully at some stage in the future, a temporary speed indication sign will be appearing in Newfield Road and West Mercia Police have promised to conduct radar speed operations as and when local operational concerns allow.

Pleasingly, this proves that local democracy works effectively when everyone pulls together andco-operates for the benefit of all.

Another problem still concerns local residents however, and that is the traffic congestion which occurs in Newfield Road and Western Road whenever there is a blockage at the main Hagley island or when there is an incident on the motorway.

Occasionally,we have seen solid immovable traffic for the whole length of both roads, including heavy lorries, and residents find it difficult to leave their homes.

If any Hagley resident has any constructive ideas about how to prevent this uninvited congestion, then they would be very welcome to use our local democratic processes again.

Peter Vaughan Hagley