Lake House Rat Running Reduction Proposal

The Council is proposing to introduce a rat running reduction scheme in the Lake House estate area. This will look to reduce rat running from Lake House Road to Blake Hall Road using the Lake House estate.

The proposal is in addition to the measures we are consulting on in regard to the expansion of the 20mph area and also include the installation of traffic calming measures in the form of speed humps or speed cushions on roads where traffic surveys indicate traffic speeds are high.

The following plan show the proposal in more detail:

• Lake House Estate Plan;

Why make changes?

The main objective of the proposed scheme is to make this area safer for all road users and reduce congestion and rat running on the Lake House Estate. The Council has collated data from traffic counters and the tables show, in a simplified format, the estimated number of rat runs which can be seen on the next page.

The Council is proposing a restricted access scheme whereby the movement of traffic through the Lake House estate will be monitored by number plate recognition cameras to identify vehicles that are deemed to be rat running that do not access properties. The scheme will be enforced using a timing threshold. Residents, visitors, carers, or delivery drivers would likely spend longer time on the estate than those using it for rat runs and should therefore not be subject to enforcement.

Subject to the consultation, the Council is proposing to use an Experimental Traffic Order which will allow further consultation, feedback and data gathering in the first six months of the scheme to assess the impacts of the measures, before making the scheme permanent. In the meantime, the Council will undertake timing runs to identify appropriate timing thresholds.

Data

The times in the table below of AM and PM refer to peak traffic times of 7am-10am, and 4pm-7pm taken during a traffic count in December 2024.