Senedd rejects bid to scrap 20mph limits
Senedd members vote down Reform’s motion to end Wales’ default 20mph speed limit, keeping the safety policy in place despite cost concerns.
Senedd members voted 51‑37 to reject a Reform Party motion calling for the Welsh Government to abandon the default 20 mph speed limit across the nation.
The motion, tabled by Reform’s shadow transport minister Jason O’Connell, was framed as a response to the 91 road deaths recorded in Wales in 2025.
O’Connell accused Plaid Cymru of being “big on independence but silent on road safety” and said: “Plaid has been focused instead on breaking up the United Kingdom, plotting with Sinn Féin and making us weaker as a result.”
Labour’s Vikki Howells warned that using total road fatalities to judge urban zones was misleading, noting that collisions on 20 mph and 30 mph roads fell by 300 between 2022 and last year.
Transport Minister Mark Hooper defended the policy, stating the lower speed limits where pedestrians, cyclists and vehicles mix remain “fundamentally the right policy”.
Hooper added that 19 people were killed on 20 mph roads during 2025 and that total casualties on 20 mph and 30 mph roads combined have fallen by 23 % since the limits were introduced, reaffirming his party’s “committed to reducing the number of people killed and seriously injured on Welsh roads”.
Reform’s Wales leader Helen Jenner argued the policy had wasted public money, pointing to councils having to replace hundreds of signs only to reconsider and restore 30 mph limits on specific routes. She said her party makes “no apology for standing up for common sense and saving public money”.
The MS representing Bangor, Conwy and Ynys Môn highlighted the practical impact on local authorities, saying they were “required to make substantial changes across their road networks before many of those same roads were then reconsidered and, in some cases, changed back again”.
She continued: “On Ynys Môn, nearly 700 road signs were replaced ahead of the introduction of the default limit.” The council then had to revisit a number of roads, consider 25 proposals to restore 30 mph limits and ultimately approve 22 of them.
Is it any wonder our electors get so frustrated when public money is wasted in this way?”
Conservative MS Janet Finch‑Saunders backed the Reform motion, reminding members that her party had opposed the 20 mph policy from the start.
Green Party MS Paul Rock urged colleagues to heed the scientific evidence, noting that a pedestrian struck by a vehicle at 30 mph faces a 50 % chance of severe injury, compared with 10 % at 20 mph.
Rock warned that focusing on cost was obscuring the core safety argument, saying the “fact that lower speeds reduce the risk of death and serious injury” was being lost.
He concluded: “Is a car journey that is, on average, less than a minute quicker really more important than the ability of a child to walk safely to school, an older person to cross the road with confidence, or a disabled person to travel independently through their community?”
The debate underscored a broader clash between fiscal concerns and road‑safety priorities, with Reform framing the issue as a matter of common‑sense budgeting and opponents stressing the proven lives saved by lower limits.
With the motion defeated, the Welsh Government’s default 20 mph speed limit remains in place, continuing a policy that, according to official figures, has contributed to a 23 % drop in casualties on the affected roads.