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Note: The following report was submitted for publication in the Birchington Parish ads. magazine before an email received from KCC Highways. An update, "Suspension of Speedwatch in Acol", following the report addresses issues arising from that correspondence...
News from Acol Parish Council - February 2025
At the top of our “Wishlist” for 2025 is a 20-mph speed limit throughout the village. This was overwhelmingly endorsed in last year’s Household Survey, and it has been on our Highways Improvement Plan (HIP) in recent years. The KCC Highways Team has now drawn-up a plan of the proposed speed limit extents, which would change the existing 30-mph limit on every road entering the village to 20-mph. (The plan is available on the Highways Section of the Acol Parish Council website.) The KCC scheme was considered and approved at the December meeting of the Parish Council, and the Highways Team has now been asked to move to the next stage, which is for the plan to be costed.
The continuing problem of heavy goods vehicles ignoring the 7.5 tonne weight limit through Acol, and KCC’s stipulation that we cannot use our CCTV to monitor transgressions but must set-up a team of observers to manually record incidents was also discussed. County Councillor Linda Wright suggested that the PC should write about the issue to Matthew Scott, Kent’s Police and Crime Commissioner.
It is normal for UK Government website addresses to have a suffix of “. gov.uk”. Although all central, and first and second tier local, government websites already follow that standard, most parish councils have, until now, not done so because of the onerous accreditation procedure required. However, our website supplier, Hugo Fox, has undertaken the necessary work on behalf of councils it supports, meaning that we can now adopt a UK government compliant website address at no cost to the parish, which was approved at the Council’s December meeting. In the coming weeks, therefore, Acol Parish Council will move to a new website address of www.acol-pc.gov.uk/ The transition will be managed on our behalf to ensure that the process is transparent to users and no website traffic is lost.
Ideally, Councillor email addresses would also follow the government address standard but, as there would be a significant increase in email costs associated with the change, your parish council decided to maintain current email addressing for the time being.
A Health and Wellbeing Group for Councils across Thanet was being setup and chaired by Birchington’s Councillor Colin Brown, which aligns with objectives for Acol arising from the Household Survey. Wendy Winpenny attended a first meeting of the group and would be drafting its Media and Communications Policy.
The next Parish Council meeting will be on Thursday 20th February at 7.30 pm in The Village Hall. All residents are warmly invited to attend.
Richard Steel (Chair)
Suspension of Speedwatch in Acol
In the February report from Acol Parish Council published in the monthly Birchington magazine—written approximately one month before delivery to homes—I, as Chair of Acol Parish Council, described that the Parish Council had approved a plan formulated by KCC Highways detailing the proposed 20-mph speed limits for our village. We subsequently requested Highways to proceed to the next stage, which we understood to involve costing the scheme.
Highways responded, stating, “…part of our consultation process of a 20mph limit means that we have to consult Kent Police and Speedwatch. Having run the proposed 20mph extents for Acol past them, they have said that based on the Speedwatch results, they would not support the scheme.”
As the Speedwatch Coordinator for Acol over the past eight years, I am disheartened that it seems our participation, as the only Thanet village involved in the Speedwatch scheme, has put us at a disadvantage in achieving our community's long-standing and widely supported goal of implementing a 20-mph speed limit through Acol. Consequently, I have decided to suspend our involvement in the Speedwatch scheme pending a thorough review of its objectives, policies, management, and utilization of the data we provide.
I will present my actions to the Acol Parish Council for consideration at its next formal meeting on Thursday, 20th February. Further updates will be reported in a subsequent "News from Acol Parish Council" article in the Birchington magazine.
Richard Steel (Acol Speedwatch Coordinator)

PARISH COUNCIL MEETING
The next Parish Council meeting will take place on Thursday 20th February 2025 at 7.30 pm.
Members of the public are encouraged to attend.
Parish Council Office
Ring the Parish Council on 01843 845363, or ring the Clerk any day (9am to 5pm) on 07712 430142.
Please ring either of these numbers if you have problems, and do not know who to contact.