A ROAD safety campaigner who received a Queen’s honour for her voluntary work has thrown her weight behind a petition to reduce speed through her home village.

Becky Frankel, who received an MBE in 2016, is one of the 400 signatures on a petition started by mothers Fiona McKay and Rachael Haddon to reduce the speed limit on Holeyn Hall Road, in Wylam, from 60mph to 40mph.

After losing her seven-year-old daughter Tiggy and her father-in-law Richard Frankel to a crash on the A1 in 2008, Becky formed the Wylam Road Safety Group along with Lynn Clark to establish establish a 20mph speed limit in the village and started to volunteer for road safety charity, Brake.

Speaking during the charity’s Road Safety Week, Mrs Frankel said: “I’m in support of decreasing the speed down that road because there’s a narrow pavement and a tall wall up the side, and there’s young pedestrians that use that road to walk down to the school bus.

“Going 60mph instead of 40mph in that distance, you only save 10 to 20 seconds on your journey so I think keeping somebody safe is worth that extra 10 seconds.”

The petition, which highlighted there had been six significant accidents reported on the road in the past five years, was handed to Tynedale Local Area Council meeting in the hope Northumberland County Council would implement the speed restriction. As the main route out of Wylam towards the A69, local residents were concerned a serious accident involving a schoolchild could occur.

There were three bus stops along the road so the stretch was well-used by young pedestrians.

Fiona said: “If you come up from the dip in the road, you don’t get a big window to cross and you have under two seconds to get to the middle point of the road.

“If you drop something or struggle with walking, there’s no room for error.”

The petition will be discussed by Tynedale’s Northumberland county councillors at December’s meeting to determine whether or not to implement the speed reduction.

But there seemed to be general support at November’s meeting.

Hexham Central with Acomb representative, Coun. Trevor Cessford, said: “I used to work as a firefighter and I got called out on numerous occasions for crashes on that junction, mainly to cut people out of cars. However, my brother was a paramedic and he got called out to three times as many so it’s been a dangerous road for many years.”