COUNCILLORS have backed a schoolboy's request for a 20mph zone outside his school despite a road safety expert's warning that the limit wouldn't be enforced by police.

Eleven-year-old Oliver Rhodes submitted a petition to Bradford Council calling for road safety measures to be introduced outside Keelham Primary, near Denholme.

Now the Bradford West Area Committee has supported Oliver’s suggestion of reducing the limit from 30mph to 20mph.

It recommended the idea to Shipley Area Committee, which has jurisdiction over the road which passes the school.

Councillors also asked officers to "continue to pursue all road safety options at this location".

But Simon D’Vali, the council’s principal engineer and chairman of the West Yorkshire Safer Roads Partnership, sounded a note of caution, pointing out that there hadn’t been any injury accidents at the location in the past five years.

“It is a difficult thing for me, as a road safety person, to come and report on this matter," he said.

"We have got to be straight about this as we are looking at spending a limited budget on the most appropriate places. I could not come to the committee and suggest that money should be put in here.

“If you did, it would be at the expense of other places of injury accidents in other wards.”

Mr D’Vali said the council had spent a lot of time with the school to help improve “pedestrian skills” among pupils.

He said one road safety option – widening the junction mouth – had been considered but it could not be done without access to school land which school governors did not want to hand over.

Councillor Val Slater, whose portfolio includes transport, paid tribute to Oliver's campaigning but said a 20mph zone may be ignored by lorries and there would be a problem with enforcement.