HAVING tried to get some information from Watford Highways Department, but to no avail, I thought your paper may be able to get an answer.

I would like to know why it was deemed necessary for the speed limit along Oxhey Lane to recently be reduced from 60 mph to 40 mph.

Also, more worryingly, why Little Oxhey Lane is now deemed so dangerous as to warrant a reduction from 60 mph to an unprecedented 30 mph.

I have a feeling that Little Oxhey Lane has no legal reasoning behind it other than councillors instigating what they feel is their inalienable right to instigate a form of social engineering under the mantra safety.

If this road was in need of a speed restriction and it was in fact legal, why are there no repeater boards along the road which are legal requirements in certain road situations?

This, however, is not the only inconsistency. If you travel in the opposite direction along Little Oxhey Lane, it's still a 60 mph speed limit. I doubt its legality.

This type of meddling for the sake of meddling, in what I assume will be in the name of safety, is escalating out of control.

When we have hospitals on their knees, schools short staffed and police recruitment at an all time low, the council armed with government grants pours money into ill-conceived road safety schemes, restrictive parking policies, ridiculous park and ride schemes and all under the untouchable headings of road safety and the environment.

They even advertise the fact in one of your previous issues, September 21, that they still have £300,000 left for such schemes.

That amount would go a long way in keeping our hospitals clean or any number of other projects that would help the local community.

It's time we asked questions of our council and insist on answers and I await to hear their answers.

But just like the present government, I'm sure our council will inform me it is not their responsibility and lay the responsibility at someone else's door.

Nothing like having unaccountable responsibility.

This letter was drafted before I saw the five-and-a-half pages of proposed parking and speed restrictions in Go Magazine (October 5). How much is this costing?

Silly me, it doesn't matter, it will come under road safety and the environment, so it must be money well spent. You have been warned.

Neal Webber, Otley Way, South Oxhey.

October 19, 2001 9:21