NEWLY elected Welsh Labour leader, Ken Skates, said "major mistakes" were made in the implementation of the 20mph speed limit in Wales.
Mr Skates, in an interview with The Leader, said he "most definitely" would have done the 20mph limit differently if he was First Minister when the law came into effect in September 2023.
Most previously 30mph roads in Wales were changed to 20mph - which became the default speed limit in built up areas.
The new law received a huge backlash, with a Senedd petition calling for it be scrapped receiving over 450,000 signatures - by far the most ever received for a Senedd petition.
"For some time 20mph has been a popular policy, but the way it was implemented made it anything but," he said.
"The way I would have gone about implementing 20mph is first of all not calling it the default speed limit. That just opens invitations to calling it a blanket speed limit.
"Instead of instructing and tasking local authorities to do as Welsh Government said, I would have allocated funding to every council. I'd have said 'if you wish to reduce a speed limit in urban areas then apply for the money, we will provide the money and we will also change the law.
"So you could package routes, you could say, in Mold for example, all these roads in the town centre would go to 20mph, but also selected routes elsewhere.
"And that would have made it really cost effective, and would have allowed people to have a greater say."
He continued: "The major mistake we made with 20mph was that people were being told what was good for them, and things were being done to their communities without always their consent."
When Mr Skates became Cabinet Secretary for Transport, in 2024 he launched a review into the speed limit. As a result, guidance was refined and local authorities were given the power to revert roads back at their own discretion.
In Wrexham, over 50 roads have been changed back to 30mph. But in Denbighshire, not a single road has been changed.
"This was another problem with the policy," Mr Skates said. "The decision making process on what routes should revert to 30 should never fall on one individual. "That is a recipe for risk-aversion. With Wrexham, they took all of the decisions to the executive board for a collective decision.
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"That makes perfect sense as you're removing the risk to one individual of making a decision to change a road back to 30mph.
"It's something that can be still dealt with. The Welsh Government could say, as a point of principal, councils should not allow a single individual to be responsible for changing a speed limit."
He added: "Lessons need to be learned, and in the future people should have a greater say on significant changes within their community."
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