SPEEDING motorists could be putting lives at risk in rural Furness villages, a meeting heard.

Signs aimed at slowing down drivers entering village have not worked for years, said a concerned councillor.

The roadside speed-activating devices installed at places such as Kirkby, Foxfield and Broughton need either repairing or removing, councillor Matt Brereton told county council bosses.

Cllr Brereton, who represents High Furness, said signs warning of the 30mph speed limit into and out of Foxfield had not worked for three years at least.

The batteries, which he described as early-generation solar-powered units, are ‘goosed,’ he said, and the situation needed reviewing.

Cllr Brereton said: “When I was elected two years ago there was about a dozen speed activated roadsigns around my division of which the last has now stopped working. There are now no working signs left and quite a lot of local residents and parish councils are complaining and asking what the county council is doing to either maintain, repair or replace these signs.”

Drivers unaware that the speed signs did not work could be breaking the limit without realising, he told a meeting in Kendal.

“Is it not worse to have the sign there and not functioning than to have no sign there at all?” asked Cllr Brereton, a Conservative councillor.

He called for a countywide ‘audit’ to be carried out to pinpoint how many are not working and for them to be either repaired or removed from roadsides.

Cllr Stewart Young, leader of the county council, said it was an issue for local county council committees to resolve, in this case South Lakeland’s.

He added that some signs were funded and maintained by either town or parish councils, and others by Highways England.

Cllr Brereton described the response as a ‘red herring’. “It is not good to just leave them all standing there with no plan,” said Cllr Brereton. “They should be either taken down, cannibalised for the bits that do work and the important ones repaired."