A regional daily’s campaign for slower speeds in residential areas has seen 20mph limits introduced in the county.

The Lancashire Telegraph launched its Slower Speeds, Safer Children campaign after finding that the one of its local boroughs had the highest rate of children under 15 injured by road accidents in the country.

The campaign has won success after Lancashire County Council agreed to complete its introduction of 20mph zones in several areas, including Burnley, Pendle and Rossendale.

Now the paper is calling for 20mph speed limits to be rolled out across county residential areas and to win a commitment from police and councils to make speed awareness courses available to all motorists breaking 20mph limits.

Local government reporter Bill Jacobs said: “The Lancashire Telegraph has a long history of campaigning on issues important to readers across our circulation area, in Blackburn, Darwen, Burnley and East Lancashire.

“We campaign as a paper on key issues, and provide the oxygen of publicity for local people’s campaigns.

“The ‘Slower Speeds, Safer Children’ campaign came from an item before the Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council. The Borough had the highest rate of children under 15 injured by road accidents, per 100,000 population, in the country.

“Kevin Young, the Lancashire Telegraph’s editor, has overseen several other successful road safety campaigns and decided that something more needed to be done.”

Earlier this week, Prime Minister David Cameron endorsed 20mph speed limits in residential areas when he announced that eight cities, and four national parks, would share £94million to promote cycling.

One of the conditions for the urban areas getting the cash was low speed limits zones to improve bike users’ safety.