Speed limit call for unfenced commons

THE Open Spaces Society, a pressure-group for common land, wants the Department for Transport to recommend local authorities introduce a 40-mile-per-hour speed limit on all roads crossing unfenced common land in England.

THE Open Spaces Society, a pressure-group for common land, wants the Department for Transport to recommend local authorities introduce a 40-mile-per-hour speed limit on all roads crossing unfenced common land in England.

The society was responding to the department's consultation paper A Safer Way: Making Britain's Roads the Safest in the World.

Its general secretary, Kate Ashbrook, said: "Commons have remained unchanged for centuries, and are truly unspoilt, natural habitats.

"But if the habitat is to be maintained, it probably needs grazing, which is not possible unless the traffic is slowed, or the road is fenced."

She said fencing was an eyesore and it was better to limit the speed of traffic.