It’s part of a wider drive to reduce deaths and injuries on Manchester’s roads20mph is a common sight across a lot of Manchester – but one town in the city will see more of these signs soon(Image: Manchester Evening News)

The next Manchester town to adopt a 20mph speed limit on its residential roads has been named.

Council bosses announced speed limits on Manchester’s residential and city centre streets will be cut from 30mph to 20mph earlier this year, after a surge in injuries and deaths.

All main roads would become 30mph, down from 40mph on eight routes, added Kevin Gillham, Manchester council’s head of citywide highways.

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“We are not suggesting a 20mph blanket ban,” he said in January.

“We are looking at bringing main roads down to 30mph, so main roads would be 30mph and residential roads would be 20mph.”

On Tuesday (October 7), town hall chiefs gave an update on how the roll-out of lower speed limits is going — and named the next town to see more 20mph zones as Wythenshawe.

“The initial study has been completed and has made a number of recommendations,” explained Catriona Swanson, the council lead for sustainable transport.

“On the back of that, and the Wythenshawe Network Plan, we have secured funding for active travel improvements across Wythenshawe, which includes 20mph.

“The deadline to spend that funding is March 2027 so that work is starting to progress.”

(Image: Manchester City Council)

However, Ms Swanson said plans for the full introduction of 20mph zones across the city still need cash.

She added: “For the rest of the city, there’s a little bit more work we need to do which we have commissioned, looking at the potential impact on journey times to ensure we are not creating issues.

“Hopefully it will find the impact on journey times is negligible. But if it does show there’s some impact, we will look at mitigations for that, and potentially look at if we need to amend the extent of that 20mph.

“That work is ongoing. We are expecting it to finish in the next few months. We are hoping to use that to secure funding.”

Moving to 20mph on residential roads is seen within the council as standardising the speed limit across Manchester, as around 70pc of Manchester’s roads are already 20mph.

Ms Swanson went on: “People who live in central, east, and south Manchester will be used to their road being 20. It’s just normal.

“But in Wythenshawe and north Manchester, it’s very patchy. Those are our priorities for getting more 20s out there.”

The move was announced after the numbers of people killed and seriously injured on Manchester’s roads rose by 50pc in four years, from 122 in 2019 to 183 in 2023.