Bombshell as spatial strategy rejected

CCC has welcomed the news that the East of England will have to rethink its transport strategy. The following news item is from Friends of the Earth:

Transport strategy in the East of England was thrown into turmoil last week after an independent inspectors report called for a complete rewrite of the regional transport plan and its policy objectives.

The report - which followed an examination-in-public of the Regional Spatial Strategy - rejects the plan's central premise that the region suffers from an "infrastructure deficit".

Instead it recommends demand management and climate change mitigation be made key priorities and calls for the deletion of a list of priority schemes, to be replaced by priorities expressed "in terms of outcomes sought".

Transport 2000's Denise Carlo said: "This marks a watershed in transport planning and is a challenge to the status quo of more roads, more traffic and more carbon emissions.

"Everyone who cares about our future environment must now persuade the government to endorse these radical changes."

The East of England strategy is the first new-style RSS to go through the process set up under the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004. It is intended to replace existing Regional Planning Guidance and County Structure Plans.

It's mauling by the panel will send shock waves through the planning community and government alike, as well as causing headaches for those regions whose plans have yet to have their public examinations.

The panel's report has been submitted to Communities and Local Government secretary Ruth Kelly and copied to the Transport and Environment secretaries. The government must take it into account in its response to the RSS.

The panel says that the East of England Regional Assembly "has sought to make the best of a difficult job", facing problems such as the need to reconcile conflicting national and regional policy objectives.

But it says the plan lacks strategic focus, with transport and spatial policies in the plan not closely enough aligned.

In a complete rewrite of the plan's policy objectives, the panel recommends the primary regional objective should be "to contribute to a reduction in the region's climate change emissions by reducing growth, and ultimately achieving an absolute reduction, in traffic on the region's road system".

It takes issue with Highways Agency's traffic forecast of a "background" increase in traffic of 45% over the 20 years to 2021 as being "incompatible with national aims for reducing carbon emissions".

It adds: "The perception on the part of EERA. is that congestion and traffic problems are symptoms of an infrastructure deficit which needs to be remedied."

By contrast the panel's "inescapable" conclusion is that "a large part of the answer to worsening congestion and to the challenge of climate change must be that people will have to use cars less in future".

While the plan attempts to build in traffic restraint measures, the panel questions "whether these policies are sufficient".

Tests carried out at the panel's request using the Highways Agency model suggested that a road user charge set at 10p or 20p per kilometre would lead to a reduction in person trips of 5% and 8% respectively, while congestion would be cut by 14% and 26% and there would be some transfer to public transport.

It calls for a strengthened policy on demand management, and puts forward new policies "intended to provide a strong framework for a programme to influence travel behaviour in the region".

The panel criticises the strategy for including, in effect, a wish-list of transport schemes which "appear to have the status of policy". Government guidance called for priorities to be identified in broad terms only and specific schemes only mentioned "where there is already a clear commitment to deliver the scheme". The table listing priorities "in its present form should be deleted" and replaced by a new appendix listing the programme of "currently approved and prioritised projects in the region, based on committed national highway projects, committed or planned national rail investment, and projects funded through the RFA and other funding regimes".

In a statement, the East of England Regional Assembly said it was in the process of considering the recommendations of the Independent Panel's report. It would make its response to the government's proposed changes during the 12 week public consultation which will take place at the end of the year.