The several 20sPlenty community campaigns in Wiltshire have faced, in recent years, intransigent opposition at County Hall from councillors and officers. It is intriguing to note the successful 20sPlenty campaign by Limpley Stoke's residents – carried by your newspaper some five years ago – has since been well-vindicated by changes in attitudes nationally, and that we were so far ahead in our sensitivity to expressed community needs. It compensates in large measure for the derision and denigration of community volunteers by those who ought to have listened then to communities’ voices, and who are still covering their ears.

It is now incontrovertible that such measures can be cheap to install, effective in use, and popular with residents.

There are many Wiltshire villages where residents strive for a degree of traffic calming so that their children can cycle and walk to school in greater safety, and many whose courteous requests have been peremptorily rejected.

As political parties begin to dust down their slogans and posters ahead of another election, perhaps it's time for such villages to hoist their own placards showing the faces and names of councillors – including parish councillors – who have rejected their democratic requests for local traffic calming measures. Most households have someone vulnerable to traffic intimidation, whether children or aged. As candidates begin to go knocking on doors, residents might well insist on commitments to support their desired calming schemes.

To quote a prominent local MP “All politics is local”...

Wil Bailey, Monkton Lodge, Warminster Road, Limpley Stoke.