Residents of a Herefordshire village say it's only a matter of time before a life is lost to traffic doing "phenomenal" speeds through it.

Chair of Canon Pyon parish council Jon Lee said traffic calming "is the number-one issue in the whole parish, and top of my list".

"But it's a straight bit of road and the first opportunity for miles for people to overtake," he said.

ALSO READ:

Despite strong local feelings on the issue, introducing such measures on the A4110 through the village, to the northwest of Hereford, "will be a struggle", he warned.

"How long will it be before someone gets killed?" resident Caroline Lamont asked. "I have been hearing this for the 13 years I've lived here."

Villagers' own initiatives to measure speeding were restricted, she added. "You have to be visible. I walk my dog every morning about 5 o'clock, and could get you 25 (speeders). The speed is phenomenal cars, motorbikes, even lorries will overtake."

But Coun Lee welcomed a recent agreement to extend the village's (notional) 30mph zone northwards to the primary school, which lacks a footpath connection to the rest of the village.

And a promised pedestrian crossing linking the village hall with the car park opposite "will be another calming measure", he said.

Parish clerk Paul Hayden said preparatory work for this had already been done five years ago.

"But highways [county officials] said those measurements are now five years out of date so they measured the speed again, and lo and behold, the speed was too fast and doesn't meet the national criteria to build a zebra crossing."

One resident called this "bureaucracy gone mad".

What are your thoughts?

You can send a letter to the editor to have your say by clicking here.

Letters should not exceed 250 words and local issues take precedence.

"The logic of it is unbelievable," Coun Lee agreed. "Hopefully we can get measures in at both ends of the village to calm the traffic and lower the speed, then we can have the crossing."

The parish council is also asking for a mini-roundabout to be included in a proposed scheme, currently with county planners, for ten new homes opposite Watling Close at the south end of the village though the issue of who would fund this would then need to be resolved, Coun Lee said.

Herefordshire Council was asked to comment on its traffic plans for the village.