After making it harder to introduce 20mph speed limits Herts County Council said it would spend £7 million to overcome its own rules and introduce at least some more 20mph limits. These will be expensive because of the council’s absurdly complicated rules about where 20 mph limits are allowed and which ones should actually be done.

Herts County Council pledged to spend £1 million by March 2022 but now they are saying that they cannot do this and that £700,000 will remain unspent. It remains to be seen whether the other £6 million is real or was just invented for the County Council elections but even if it is at this rate it will only result in a tiny proportion of suitable roads getting a 20mph limit.

Other councils, like Lancashire and Suffolk have done the job much more cheaply by just doing all suitable roads at once, without lots of unnecessary humps and chicanes. Hertfordshire should scrap their complex rules and do the same.