COMMUNITIES eager to stop drivers racing past their homes will have to wait until next year before they can adopt any of Oxfordshire’s redundant speed cameras, it emerged last night.

And villagers in Nuneham Courtenay decided at a meeting on Thursday night that they would be unable to afford to adopt the camera on the A4074 through their community.

Thames Valley Safer Roads Partnership said it would cost about £5,000 a year to keep a camera in operation, after the county council withdrew £600,000 of funding for the partnership’s work at the start of the month.

Although they decided not to foot the bill for the camera, Nuneham Courtenay residents remain concerned about speeding traffic, after a survey carried out by the county council in March found 861 motorists were breaking the 30mph limit at the southern end of the village over the course of a week.

They fear the county’s decision will remove the only deterrent to speeding drivers.

Parish councillor Colin George said: “We’re priced out of being able to afford the camera.

“We have only got 100 houses in the parish, so to afford it we’d have to put an extra £50 on every home’s council tax.”

He added: “Our only hope is that the county council realises some of the speed cameras have been in sensitive areas and we might be able to get a contribution from them to keep the camera at a later date.

“Its not just a safety issue but a quality of life issue for villagers, because we can be woken up by someone going through at 70mph.”

Fellow councillor Lauren Lister said: “They’ve put the camera there because there was a speeding problem and now they’re leaving us with a problem that we have got to deal with ourselves.”

Woodstock town councillor Trish Redpath said: “Adopting speed cameras would be something that the council would be interested in debating.

“It can be slightly dangerous for parish and town councils to start picking up things that other authorities have decided are too expensive, because you don’t quite know when you’re going to stop.”

Safer Roads Partnership spokesman Dan Campsall said that the organisation could load camera films and process fines for communities willing to pay to keep speed cameras, however the Government would still receive money from any fixed penalty notices issued to speeding drivers.

He added: “It would be the next financial year before we could feasibly do this but we may be able to consult on it within a few months.

“Being realistic, we can’t drop everything for the remaining 15 partners and start trying to deal with the issues in Oxfordshire.”