THE fight to improve the ‘quality of life’ for Sproston residents has picked up the pace with the parish council pushing for a reduced speed limit through the village. 

Cllr Jim McKechnie and parish council clerk Alan Hartopp have been leading the fight to reduce the 40mph speed limit on the A54 Holmes Chapel Road to 30mph through the residential area, but hit a speed bump when they were told Sproston needs one more house to meet the 30mph criteria. 

According to national government policy, through-roads running through villages should always be 30mph, which the parish council argues applies to Sproston, but Cheshire West and Chester Council (CWAC) says it defines ‘village’ to be at least 20 houses and Sproston has 19.

Alan Hartopp, Sproston Parish Council clerk, said: “Every village should have a maximum speed limit of 30mph through the village and that’s the national standard but CWAC’s criterion for a village is 20 houses and they say that we only have 19 houses so we don’t meet the criteria.” 

Cllr McKechnie was involved in the parish council’s campaign to get the road reduced from 60mph to 40mph more than 10 years ago and despite missing out on the automatic 30mph limit by just one house, he insists the parish council is determined to get the speed reduced and will not rest until it has been.

The former parish council chairman said the increasing volume of HGVs makes the shakes his house and gives Sproston residents a poor quality of life. 

Cllr McKechnie said: “It took us years to get it reduced from 60mph to 40mph. We fought hard for that and in the end we took videos and took them into Cheshire Highways and they agreed to reduce it. But now the amount of traffic has increased. They come off the motorway and they are still in motorway mode. It really affects the quality of life for Sproston residents.

“20,000 vehicles a day come down this road and 75 per cent of those are HGV’s and we know that through traffic counts that we’ve had done. Mid Point 18 is escalating quickly. We’ve got the waste transfer site and more houses being built and that’s got to put the traffic count up well over 20,000.

“I get woken up nightly by lorries hitting the kerb outside and the whole house shakes and the bed shakes and then you can’t get back to sleep for the noise. 

“I have spent thousands of pounds on my property sound proofing it and it still shakes when lorries go past.”