Turns out the 20mph limit was a great idea!
Two years on from the controversial policy, it's becoming increasingly clear that the doubters were wrong
Morning!
We are now two years since the chaos that was the introduction of the 20mph limit.
Today we are going to break down why, not only does it appear to have worked, it might be one of the best things the Welsh Government have ever done.
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20mph has been an overwhelming success
Exactly two years ago when I was working as a political journalist at WalesOnline there was only one story in which anyone was interested - 20mph. The Welsh Government was moving all of Wales’ 30mph limits down to 20mph (except for any that were exempted by the local authority).
Political journalists in Wales couldn’t believe their luck. People in Wales and beyond were actually talking about a Welsh Government policy. With the exception of the pandemic, there have been very few times that Welsh politics has been something people actively sought out and engaged with.
Normally a big part of the job of a political journo in Cymru is to explain to readers why they should care about what is happening at Cardiff Bay, so it was mindblowing that people were already interested.
The level of rage and hysteria that accompanied it was so disproportionate to what was actually happening. After I wrote a piece citing the science underpinning the change, my then office was covered in picture “Wanted” pictures of me as I was the “disinformer of the year” who had committed “crimes against humanity”.
But now we are a few years out from the introduction we can actually look at the data and see what the results of the policy have been. Plus we can also challenge some of the false narratives that have built up around the policy.
Have people slowed down?
This one is easy - yes.
This graph shows the mean speeds in the areas impacted by the change:
As you can see after September 2023 when the change came in, people started driving slower and it stayed at that level.
Now what you will notice is that people are still, on average, breaking the 20mph limit. But this was always to be expected and doesn’t mean that the policy isn’t working.
The general rule of thumb for urban roads is that a 1mph reduction in average speeds will result in a 6% reduction in casualties (Taylor, Lynam and Baruya, 2000 for you nerds). That’s because in the speed range of 20mph to 30mph any reduction both increases the ability of the parties involved in an incident to avoid a crash and the resulting severity of any injuries.
Is it reducing casualties?
What is great about evidence based policy is that it has a wonderful habit of working.
When you look at the data in Wales, this stands up.
The reduction of 4.2mph from 29mph in July 2023 to 25mph in July this year would be expected to reduce casualties on these roads by 25.2%. The actual reduction was even better at 26.2%.
This is also consistent with other casualty reductions in Edinburgh, London, Brussels and other places implementing wide-area 20mph/30kmh limits.
This table shows the difference in casualties on the affected roads:
If you get turned off by a table, the key here is that the number of casualties fell by 630 - more than a third.
“But, but, but, this may not be to do with the speed change”
You can almost hear the anti 20mph protestors warming up their thumbs to furiously type that this fall may simply be down to a decrease in casualties across all roads. To be fair, this is something that is worth considering. Perhaps there is more at play here than the speed limit changes?
But when you dig into the data this argument doesn’t stack up. This graph shows the change in casualties on roads with limits 40mph and above and those that are 20/30mph. The grey shows the casualties before the change, and the red shows after the change.
As you can see, the trend on faster roads is for more casualties. Whereas on 20/30 roads it is falling. This strongly suggests that the casualty fall can’t be attributed to something else.
Now you may be wondering why I am including 20 AND 30 roads in this? Fair question. Basically, there is no way in the police/Welsh Government data to search by just roads that changed to 20mph. You can only search by 20/30. Given that the vast, vast majority of 30mph roads did change this is still reflective of the situation.
Has this saved money?
Those 630 fewer people not being hit by massive lumps of metal are now 630 people who haven’t had to give up work, go to hospital appointments or stop caring for loved ones. There is a huge societal benefit to the policy. But what about the cost of bringing it in?
One of the key criticisms of the 20mph limit was the cost of implementing it. It cost £32m to implement however a Welsh Government FoI suggests this could be nearer £40m. If we say for the sake of argument, the cost is at the higher end, so £39m, then it has already proven great value for money.
People getting hit by a car is VERY expensive for society. The Department for Transport estimates that the cost per accident is on average:
Killed - £2,411,659
Seriously injured- £271,003
Slightly injured - £20,892
If we apply this to the first year change in crashes it looks like this:
This means in one year the policy likely saved around £44m. So in 12 months it has already paid for itself. These trends have continued into the second year.
Drop in insurance premiums
Perhaps the biggest indication of the fact the 20mph limit is working comes from insurance companies. Car insurance providers like Esure have noticed reduced risk on urban roads in Wales following a 20% reduction in damage claims. This has resulted in a reduction in premiums of £45 a year for the average driver. When extrapolated to the roughly 2 million Welsh vehicles this is worth £90m per year.
Not bad for a one off investment of under £40m.
What about the increase in journey times?
One of the legitimate reasons to criticise the 20mph has been that it has made journey times go up. There is no doubt that it has. As part of the monitoring the Welsh Government assessed 15 routes in the morning and evening and in each direction (60 journey times in total).
Average journey time increased in 57 out of 60 cases, but in the majority of cases (44 out of 57) by no more than two minutes.
The largest increase in average journey time was just under four minutes - on the Aberystwyth to Cardigan route in the morning peak period. However, this is only a 5.9% increase in overall journey time, reflecting the fact this route is considerably longer than the others at 61km.
However, I think one really interesting element of the data was that in 45/60 cases, the variation in journey times reduced. This means that, since 20mph came in, there was more certainty around how long a journey will take.
Increasing fines?
There has been a lot of attention given to the fact that there has been a huge increase in speeding fines or “NIPs” since the 20mph limit was introduced.
It is totally correct to say that the number of tickets for speeding has soared in Wales since 2022. However the data suggests you would be wrong to blame 20mph for this. If you compare the increase in NIPs since 2022 on both 20mph/30mph and 40-60mph roads, you see that the bigger increase is on faster roads.
As you can see, the number of fines on both types of roads have increased, but the growth has been steeper on faster roads. This data comes from FOIs sent to Welsh police forces by the campaign group, "20 is Plenty".
Changing roads back
After the Welsh Government panicked following the initial backlash, the transport minister Ken Skates announced a listening exercise on what roads should be changed back to 30mph.
What is interesting here is how it has played out differently in different parts of Wales.
So when the legislation came in, it changed all 30s down to 20s unless the local authority exempted a road. Clearly there are a lot of 30 roads that have no business changing down to 20 and councils should have made sure they didn’t change. However some simply did not do this.
Those councils that made the most exemptions back in 2023 ended up needing to make the fewest changes in 2025 after the public consultation on the issue.
Blaenau Gwent Council exempted the most roads in Wales in 2023 at 10.5%. Since then they have only ended up changing back one road.
On the other hand Wrexham exempted just 1.3% and they have now had to change 45 roads to 30mph. Many of these could simply have been done back in 2023.
Why are Labour distancing themselves from one of their few measurable accomplishments?
The introduction of 20mph and the saga that surrounded it was illuminating for so many reasons. You can learn a hell of a lot about Welsh politics from the 20mph controversy.
Terrible messaging
It was a lesson in how not to conduct political communication. When it came to public messaging, all of the effort went into “what” was happening and not “why” it was happening. This left a vacuum that was willingly filled by those whose aim was anger and division.
I am not saying that many, many people did not oppose the change. They did. But the terrible Welsh Government messaging allowed others to totally drive the narrative.
Welsh Labour failed to own one of the things they actually did well!
The evidence that 20mph was both a good idea financially and from a life saving perspective is unequivocal. We all knew that it was highly likely that after a year had passed, the results would show that it was a good bit of policy making. We also knew from decades of controversial policies in the UK, that after a while, people get used to things.
Yet within weeks of the 20mph limits being introduced the Welsh Government panicked. After a few go-slow protests on the M4 they started to distance themselves from the policy and even now are scared to even mention it.
In this, Welsh Labour are falling into mistakes made repeatedly by Keir Starmer in Westminster:
Trying to appease the unappeasable.
The people who are still angry about 20mph are never going to vote Labour. Why Welsh Labour spent time trying to convince people who will never be convinced is bizarre.
The data suggest that most people don’t really care about 20mph either way any more. Just take a look at Google searches over it. After October 2023, very few people are searching for it.
If you want more evidence look at the response rate to the Welsh Gov’s listening exercise. In Ceredigion when asked “which road do you want changing from 20mph to 30mph?” only 0.02% of the population responded. In Powys it was 0.05%. Hardly signs of a controversial policy that remains in the public consciousness.
Failing to fight for what they believe in.
The evidence that the Welsh Government made the right policy choice around 20mph is strong. Yet now we have got the point they have been proved right they are utterly failing to own the decision. Rather than saying “it was tough but we have saved the people of Wales £40 a year on insurance and millions for the NHS” they are just trying to avoid it. It’s counter productive because it allows the likes of the Welsh Conservatives and Reform to continue to push the narrative that this was the wrong decision.
Politics is brutal. Plaid were happy to let Labour take the blame, and Labour were happy for Lee Waters to be thrown under the bus
Plaid Cymru were in favour of the 20mph limit. They voted for it. They were propping up the Labour administration that introduced it.
This was a line directly from their 2021 manifesto:
However the second it was clear that it was becoming electorally unpopular, they didn’t say a word in defence of the policy they themselves had in their manifesto.
Labour themselves were happy to allow the minister responsible Lee Waters to take all the flack and hostility. Now don’t get me wrong, I believe Lee Waters is well capable of making his point (and could probably have an argument in an empty house) but the way he was hung out to dry by his party after introducing one of the few Welsh Government initiatives to meaningfully improve people’s lives was uncomfortable to see.
That’s all for this week. I want to thank the hundreds of you who have gifted a subscription to someone they know. You can do that here:
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Take care
Will
This is a great article. You should make this one free to read, as it should cut through.
Love a bit of data journalism. Great read 👏👏