COUNCILLORS have said that introducing a 30mph speed limit on Exeter Road will be a waste of time and motorists will ignore it.

Somerset County Council is reducing the speed limit on the road ready for the Bagley Road housing development.

But members of Wellington Town Council have said some motorists will ignore the new restrictions and continue using Exeter Road as a ‘race track’.

“Speed limits should be appropriate to the road,” said Cllr John Thorne at the town council’s February meeting. “But motorists will not abide to the 30mph along that road. It’s like a race track of a road and some motorists will race along there.”

Cllr Mark Lithgow said it will become a ‘cash cow’ for when a speed camera van sits alongside the road capturing speeders. He said the authorities would be raising ‘hundreds and thousands of pounds’ from the ‘poor souls who aren’t used to that stretch of road’.

Cllr Nancy Brace-Powell said: “It will be pointless putting 30mph down there without any sort of traffic control. Nobody will take any notice of the 30mph – it is a wide and open road.”

It had been previously suggested by Cllr Nick Smith that the speed limit on Exeter Road should be lowered even further to just 20mph.

But Cllr Andy Govier said: “I wouldn’t support reducing it to 20mph. I can understand reducing it to 30mph but I don’t support it going any lower. I think people would ignore 20mph. I think it is perfectly acceptable to be 30mph.”