A Caversham crossing petitioned for in 2017 tops Reading's 97 outstanding road requests. Councillors set the running order on Thursday, with £550,000 to spend.
Reading Borough Council is holding 97 outstanding requests from residents and councillors for crossings, speed humps, bollards and 20mph limits. Most have been waiting years. On Thursday, councillors are asked to agree, for the first time, the order in which they get done.
The top one is a controlled pedestrian crossing at the junction of Henley Road, Peppard Road, Prospect Street and Westfield Road in Caversham. It was first petitioned for in 2017.
The list, and what is finally behind it
The requests sit on what the council calls the Principal List: things asked for that are not being delivered through any other programme. Officers are blunt about why it has grown. “Historically, the rate at which new requests have been received has exceeded the Council’s ability to investigate, develop and deliver schemes,” the report says (item 13, Requests for Traffic Management Measures).
That changed in February 2026, when full Council approved:
- £1.25m of capital funding across three financial years from 2026/27, with £550,000 in year one
- revenue funding to recruit an Engineer and an Assistant Engineer into the Network Services team
Twenty-one of the 97 requests are ranked Priority 1. Officers have scored those against deliverability, cost, road safety evidence, support for active travel and local demand, and set out a five-year running order at Appendix 3. Estimated spend is £550,000 in year one and £350,000 in each of years two to five, the last two subject to funding.
Being on the list guarantees nothing. The report says inclusion “does not indicate that a proposal is technically feasible, represents value for money, or would ultimately secure statutory approval”.
What is at the front
| Rank | Where | What was asked for | Estimate | Target year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Henley Road at Peppard Road, Caversham | Controlled pedestrian crossing at the junction | £600,000 | 2027/28 |
| 2 | Wensley Road, Coley | Brighter LED beacons on the existing zebra crossing | £5,000 | 2026/27 |
| 3 | Whitley Wood Road at Tamarisk Avenue | Keep clear marking to protect the right turn | £1,000 | 2026/27 |
| 4 | Bridge Street, outside the Civic Offices | Upgrade the traffic island to a full zebra crossing | £80,000 | 2027/28 |
| 5 | Portman Road near Bridgewater Close | Pedestrian crossing to reach the industrial estate | £80,000 | 2027/28 |
| 6 | Kidmore Road, Caversham | Traffic calming along the road | £230,000 | 2027/28 and 2028/29 |
| 7 | Lowfield Road, Emmer Green | Controlled pedestrian crossing east of Peppard Road | £80,000 | 2028/29 |
| 8 | Lydford Road, Redlands | Bollards to stop through traffic | £10,000 | 2028/29 |
Look at the second and third rows. Better beacons on an existing Wensley Road zebra cost £5,000. A keep clear box on Whitley Wood Road costs £1,000. Both are pencilled in for this financial year, and between them they come to barely one percent of the year-one budget.
The Henley Road crossing is a different animal. Officers’ preferred option is a complete technical refresh and replacement of the signal equipment at the junction, which they estimate at £500,000, and they warn of “many uncertainties that could significantly impact this estimate”. The total in the table is £600,000, against which about £110,000 of Section 106 developer money is already secured. Delivery is split across two years, 2026/27 for development and 2027/28 for the work.
The Henley Road crossing, nine years in
The Caversham junction is the clearest case of how slowly this list has moved. From the officers’ own record:
- November 2017: a petition for controlled crossing facilities at the junction goes to the sub-committee.
- January 2018 and November 2022: update reports set out the difficulty of fitting a crossing inside a signal-controlled junction.
- October 2022: a second petition, with 1,341 responses.
- November 2022: a wider area survey run by the local MP is reported, showing 1,244 respondents in favour of a crossing at the junction.
- September 2026: it is ranked first for development, with work targeted at 2027/28.
The casualty record officers logged for it is one slight and one serious collision involving pedestrians in the latest three-year period available to them, which ran to September 2022.
It is also the one request on the Priority 1 list with no total score against it. Every other entry is scored out of ten. Henley Road is marked N/A and carries a note that it is “understood to be the top priority request for development”.
A new gate on future requests
The report also asks councillors to approve a scoring test that every new request would have to pass before it could even join the list. Six factors, each scored 0 to 2, with a minimum on each:
- Road safety: needs greater evidence from police collision data, a 2
- Deliverability: at least some foreseen challenges rather than significant ones, a 1
- Strategic transport aims: at least some support for active travel, a 1
- Environment and climate: at least little or no negative impact, a 1
- Local support: needs significant evidence of demand, a 2
- Funding: a 0 is allowed, but a 0 means the estimate is above £100,000
Fail any one of them and the request does not go to committee at all. Officers write back explaining why, and the request is not held on a reserve list.
That last point is the substantive change. Until now, a request that could not be funded stayed on the books. In future it will not, which is how the council intends to stop the backlog rebuilding, and also how a request with genuine local support but a six-figure price tag can drop out.
Two long-standing entries are proposed for deletion on Thursday for reasons of their own. A new footway on Hamilton Road, leading to a school entrance, is recommended for removal because there is not enough highway land to build it: the boundary would have to move into private land, which would then need clearing of fencing, trees and vegetation, plus drainage, street lighting moves and possible utility diversions. Spiral road markings at the Oracle roundabout, asked for in 2014, are recommended for removal because the roundabout is being altered as part of the active travel scheme anyway.
What it means for you
If you have ever emailed the council or your ward councillor about a crossing or a speed hump, this is the document that says where it stands. All 97 entries are published in full, with the street, the ward, what was asked for, the officer’s comment and the casualty data, in Appendix 1.
Three things worth knowing before you look:
- A cheap request moves fastest. The two items scheduled for delivery this year cost £5,000 and £1,000. The scoring test rewards anything under £20,000 and penalises anything over £100,000.
- Evidence of local demand is scored. A petition or a survey with real numbers behind it is worth two points; officers gave the Oxford Road area zone its push partly on a 219-response survey.
- Nothing here is a promise. The sub-committee is agreeing an order of development, not funding schemes. Costs, feasibility and priorities are all explicitly subject to review.
The same meeting decides whether six other schemes go out to public consultation, including the two 20mph zones and the King’s Road bus lane change. We have written those up separately: what the council wants to do to six Reading roads. For what is dug up this week, see the Reading roadworks and travel page.
Questions people ask
How many traffic requests is Reading Borough Council holding?
97 on the Principal List as of September 2026, of which 21 are ranked Priority 1.
How much money is there for them?
£1.25m of capital funding over three financial years from 2026/27, agreed by full Council in February 2026. Year one has £550,000. Years two to five are estimated at £350,000 each, with the last two subject to funding being found.
What is Reading’s top traffic priority?
A controlled pedestrian crossing at the junction of Henley Road, Peppard Road, Prospect Street and Westfield Road in Caversham, estimated at £600,000 and targeted at 2027/28.
How do I ask for a crossing or speed humps on my road?
Requests come in from residents, ward councillors and stakeholders. From now on, if councillors approve the change, each one is scored by officers against six factors first, and only requests that meet the minimum on all six are put to the sub-committee for adding to the list.
Where can I see the full list?
Appendix 1 to the 10 September 2026 Traffic Management Sub-Committee agenda, published on the council’s democracy site. It names every street and ward.
Sources
- Item 13: Requests for Traffic Management Measures for the £1.25m, the staffing, the assessment methodology and the officers’ account of the backlog.
- Appendix 1: Principal List, September 2026 for all 97 requests.
- Appendix 2: proposed amendments for the Hamilton Road footway and Oracle roundabout removals.
- Appendix 3: Priority 1 development order for the ranking, the cost estimates, the scores, the year-by-year spend and the Henley Road petition history.
- Traffic Management Sub-Committee, 10 September 2026 for the agenda.
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