Horstead with stanninghall Parish Council
What is Community Speed Watch?
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Community Speed Watch (CSW) is a community operated initiative that was launched in 2007 by the Norfolk Constabulary to allow volunteers to officially monitor and report to the Police details of speeding vehicles in areas of concern to the community.
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Community Speed Watch is not enforcement, unlike the Police or Safety Camera Partnership we do not issue fines.
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The CSW initiative allows members of the community to address speeding issues by becoming actively involved in road safety, using speed detection equipment to monitor speeds from safe locations.
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Whilst all of the road safety partners are working together to achieve casualty reduction targets and reduce the number of people killed and seriously injured on our roads we cannot expect Police Officers to carry out enforcement checks in every community on a regular basis. This is where CSW can help by working with the partnership.
Our aim is NOT to catch as many speeding drivers as possible but to raise awareness that excessive speeds are socially unacceptable. We aim to reduce speed in areas of concern and address issues from communities by raising awareness.
Background to the Coltishall and Horstead CSW Scheme
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In May 2017 the idea of resurrecting a Coltishall & Horstead CSW was proposed by the then Coltishall Parish Councillor, Bob Grindrod. In August 2017 Bob and a representative from Horstead with Stanninghall Parish Council met with a Police & Safety Camera Partnership representative to agree sites and to carry out a risk assessment on them. They had a record of the sites used by the previous Speed Watch teams already so it was quite a quick process to re-evaluate them and have them signed off.
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By September 2017 the training of volunteers had commenced, and by the end of the October twelve volunteers had been recruited and a trial CSW session was held on the North Walsham Road near to the Ling Way junction.
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As Bob noted at the time, (It) was highly effective in slowing traffic. At one point it was going slowly enough that cars stopped to allow pedestrians to cross! This session was also partly designed to iron out any process issues. No drivers were reported for speeding on this occasion.
Where we are now.
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Over the years we have lost and gained volunteers and the role of co-ordinator has fallen on several shoulders. We used to have four teams of four members but are now running with twelve volunteers across two teams, one for Coltishall and one for Horstead. Each team has a two-week window, this gives the team leader greater flexibility for when to hold at least one session. Across Norfolk there are over nine hundred volunteers spread across over one hundred CSW Teams.
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As there is an increasing demand from communities for more schemes and less and less funding for new kit then we are required to hold at least twelve sessions a year, anything less and a CSW Team would be in jeopardy of being disbanded.
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I’m pleased to say we easily exceed the minimum.
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Join the scheme
If you'd like to join a Community Speed Watch group near you, or want to know more about the scheme:
Email our Community Speed Watch team at Communityspeedwatch@norfolk.police.uk or read our volunteer guidance.
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How we operate.
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CSW volunteers monitor vehicles from the designated sites which have been risk assessed and approved by the police. Working as a minimum of three in a team we use police approved hand-held speed detection device to check the speed of vehicles and any vehicles recorded driving 24+ mph in a 20mph limit, 35+ mph in a 30mph limit and 46+ mph in a 40mph limit is written down on a monitoring sheet. The details recorded are time, date, site, make, model, colour, registration and speed.
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The CSW Co-ordinator enters the details into a spreadsheet which is emailed to the CSW Administrator for processing. The spreadsheet is compiled in such a way that is interfaces directly with their systems. A PNC (Police National Computer) check is run on the vehicle and the registered keeper’s information is obtained and a letter is sent.
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For a first offence – A letter is sent to the registered keeper advising details of the offence and a reminder of the effects of their action
For a second offence – A follow up letter is sent to registered keeper with stronger wording
Persistent offenders and High Speeders will be added to a tasking list and circulated for targeted police intervention
Statistics From Norfolk Police
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These statistics will be updated as and when Norfolk Police release the data.
CSW Overview September 2024 Norfolk.
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​If you are interested in how many offences are detected at each of the fixed camera sites or by the mobile operators, the data is provided below, and will be updated as and when the data appears in the public domain.
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