A South London council has voted to expand 20mph zones across more streets in the borough in a bid to slash accidents. Kingston Council is looking to turn residential roads that still have a 30mph speed limit into 20mph zones, with individual committees making decisions for their areas.

The council's south of the borough neighbourhood committee unanimously approved the plans for their area on Tuesday, January 24. It means residential roads in the neighbourhood that are controlled by the council and have 30mph speed limits will be restricted to 20mph.

Sonny Pham, senior highway and transport engineer at the council, said: "Reducing speed limit we believe will make our roads safer, reduce the number [and] severity [of] road casualties, will make our roads more easy and attractive, reduce pollution, noise, et cetera, encourage more people to travel by walking, sustainable transport."

A council report says 70 per cent of Kingston's roads are already covered by 20mph speed limits – including 60pc of roads in the south of the borough.

Councillors welcomed the move at Tuesday's meeting. Lib Dem councillor Steph Archer said: "I know this is one of the levers we can use to make our roads safer and particularly as we're talking about residential roads where children are walking to school, people are trying to cycle or scoot so this makes the road safer."

Councillor Archer added that residents on roads listed in the report as targets for the 20mph speed limit "come to us regularly and say there's issues of speeding". Lib Dem council leader Andreas Kirsch added: "It's the right move – it makes our roads, as others already mentioned, safer for all users."

The report adds that the cost of installing signs, road markings and the traffic management order to change the speed limit on the listed roads is expected to be around £30,000, which will be funded by grants from Transport for London (TfL).