South Craven has a new £3,600 speed gun to crack down on motorists who drive too fast.

North Yorkshire Police, the Craven Community Safety Partnership and the North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service have joined together with nine South Craven parish councils to buy the hand-held device.

Steve Scott, the safer neighbourhood sergeant for Cross Hills, wrote to the nine parish councils – Bradley, Carleton, Cononley, Cowling, Glusburn and Cross Hills, Farnhill, Lothersdale, Sutton-in-Craven and Thornton-in-Craven – and asked them to contribute.

Each council chipped in about £200 and the Craven Community Safety Partner-ship gave £1,800.

“We’ve now got the device and the plan is to get into the villages so they can get value out of their contribution,” said Sgt Scott.

Partnership manager Stacey Mitchell said: “When councils held their area forums, speeding was always an issue in South Craven.”

Ben Cairns, chairman of the partnership’s road safety task group, said the group had collated data on the amount, speed and time of traffic travelling through a particular area.

“We believe using mobile speed guns is a more targeted approach,” he said. “They can be applied to areas of known risk.”

One of the main target areas is Cowling.

“We’ll provide Sgt Scott with information on times when speeding is most prolific, so then he can target his deployment more successfully,” said Mr Cairns.

Sgt Scott said planning for the speed gun scheme started in May 2009 with the idea of finding a way to involve the community.

He said: “We’re not looking at members of the public operating the speed gun – they are for us to use and for them to be part of the process. Some people have said this is a good idea for the locals to get an appreciation of a particular problem in their area.”

Mr Cairns said: “We have funded speed guns in other areas like Settle, Ingleton and Skipton and they’ve proved successful.”