Measures to encourage people to walk and cycle in East Suffolk are not ambitious enough, according to opposition councillors.

The opposition Green party at East Suffolk Council say that people living in rural parts of the district are put off from walking or cycling between villages or towns because of safety fears, and the authority's walking and cycling strategy doesn't go far enough to address those concerns.

The consultation on the draft strategy ended on January 10, with responses now being considered.

Suffolk Coastal Green party chairman Julian Cusack said many of the individual measures were welcome, but added: "We are disappointed that the council's plans for rural areas lack ambition.

"The council does not seem to recognise that people are deterred from cycling between villages or into their local town by understandable fears for their safety.

"The gold standard for cycling is physical separation from motor vehicles and pedestrians. This is what we would like to see along significant major roads including the A12 north and south from Darsham Station.

"Elsewhere, cycling and walking on our country lanes can be made safer by speed limits on the newly designated Quiet Lanes and simple measures such as repairing passing places on single track roads many of which are severely pot-holed."

Cllr Rachel Smith-Lyte said reducing speed limits on rural routes between towns and villages to 40mph should be implemented where walking and cycling paths cannot be separated from the road.

The strategy aims to identify opportunities where cycling and walking infrastructure can be improved and new routes implemented.

It says walking and cycling routes should be improved or new infrastructure added on key corridors such as between Lowestoft and Bungay, Ipswich and Melton, and Ipswich and Felixstowe.

David Ritchie, Conservative cabinet member for planning and coastal management, said: "The East Suffolk Cycling and Walking Strategy identifies opportunities to improve cycling and walking infrastructure across the district.

"The draft strategy highlighted that identified infrastructure opportunities should not be read as prescriptive proposals, or as the only way in which the infrastructure improvements can be delivered, but as high-level opportunities, and that the strategy should not be seen as an exhaustive list of all of the cycling and walking infrastructure potential in the district.

"More than 800 comments were submitted to the initial map-based consultation between October and December 2020.

"Subsequent consultation on the draft strategy began on November 1 last year and ended on January 10.

"Consideration will be given, and the strategy amended, to take account of comments before a final document is due to be published in the spring."