Drivers using roads as a race track say villagers

People living in a village say their weekend evenings, once punctuated by the soothing sounds of nature, are being increasingly disturbed by the sound of high powered cars racing down their roads.

Residents of Cookham say the problems started in the Covid lockdowns but have been getting worse in the last few months.

Thames Valley Police says its now identified Winter Hill as an official hotspot for anti-social behaviour and excessive driving speeds and is putting extra resources into the area.

The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead says it's also looking at how it can make it harder for what it calls 'boy racers' to use the village as somewhere they can push their cars to the limit.

At a meeting held in Cookham's Parish Council offices, locals wanted to know what the police were doing to tackle the problem and also what they could do to help them.

Sergeant Luke Jenkins told them that if they were hearing cars racing round their roads late at night they should call 999 immediately.

Pointing out that Thames Valley Police has a team of highly trained pursuit officers a few miles away in Taplow he said while they couldn't guarantee they'd be available to respond to a call, they would try and get there as fast as possible.

"As of 1st September Winter Hill became an official hotspot for our neighbourhood team which means we are required and monitored so we have to go and patrol that area and record the actions we take," Jenkins said.

He added that this meant he could send more resources into Cookham and that local residents could also help by sending him photographs of any cars racing around their roads so officers could identify the culprits later.

While enforcement is the job of the police, introducing measures to make Cookham's roads less appealing to what local councillor Mark Wood called 'boy racers' is the job of the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead.

He says the council had: "Previously tried to install speed bumps on a local road to force people to slow down, but the rules say if you are going to put one in you have to have a street light nearby so they can be seen.

"Unfortunately some people living nearby didn't want the street lamp there so we couldn't install the speed bump, even though we wanted to."