Archived decisions

Contact: Iain Reeve, ext 5301 email: [email protected]

1. Summary

1.1 This paper proposes a framework for the development of the second Local Transport Plan (LTP), which will provide a transport strategy for 2006-2011.

2. Background

2.1 Local transport authorities (county councils and unitary authorities) are required to produce an LTP every five years. Hampshire County Council's first LTP was published in 2000 and covered the five years from 2001-02 to 2005-06. The second LTP will cover the period from 2006-07 to 2010-11. Although as a Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) `Excellent' authority, the County Council is not required to produce an LTP, in order to maximise the level of funding received, and as an opportunity to involve and inform key stakeholders and the general public about the County Council's transport policies, it is considered beneficial to produce an LTP in full accordance with Government guidance.

2.2 The LTP states the authority's transport strategy for the five year period. The Government uses the LTP process to determine the allocation of resources to individual authorities and also to assess local authority performance as part of the CPA regime.

2.3 The format and content of LTPs is governed by Government guidance. The Government gave local authorities considerable leeway in the production of the first LTPs in 2000. However, the latest guidance for the second LTPs is much more prescriptive.

2.4 Unfortunately, there have been considerable delays in the Government producing its final guidance, the baseline data and software. Draft guidance was available in consultation form in August 2004 - several months after it was originally promised. The final version of this guidance was published on 8 December 2004, with supplementary guidance on 23 and 29 December. Some elements of the guidance remain unfinished and have been promised "before December 2005".

2.5 These delays have made it difficult to make progress on the development of the LTP. It has been possible to undertake a programme of preparatory work, but this has had to be flexible in order to accommodate changes in the guidance requirements.

2.6 In recognition of these problems, the Government has now extended the deadline for producing "full" LTPs. Authorities are still required to submit LTPs by the previous deadline of end July 2005, but these will be classed as "provisional". Full LTPs will be required by the end of March 2006. Whilst this extension is welcomed, it does require a change to the County Council's intended timetable and work programme.

3. Timetable

3.1 A provisional LTP has to be submitted to Government on 29 July 2005, with a full LTP required by end March 2006. In order to meet the July deadline the draft LTP will be produced in April, following a series of seminars with the Transport Strategy Panels and key stakeholders during March. Approval of the provisional LTP will then be sought by the appropriate Executive Member, Cabinet and Council meetings in order to meet the required July submission date. An extensive consultation exercise will be carried out on the provisional Plan in the autumn; it will then be redrafted and approved prior to final submission in March 2006. A detailed timetable is included in the appendix.

3.2 The later stages of the process will depend on the timing of further guidance from Government and on the outcome of a number of research projects that will run throughout 2005, including key research on accessibility, congestion and the continuing evolution of the South East Plan.

4. Overall Themes of the LTP

4.1 It is proposed that the County Council's approach to the development of the second LTP should be evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Large parts of the Council's existing policy framework are consistent with Government policy and the emerging LTP guidance. This includes road and bridge maintenance, safety, travel planning, school travel, travel information and marketing. These policies should be retained in order to develop a secure LTP. However, it will be necessary to identify budgets for each area, to quantify the targets that will be met and to present the policies and programmes in the format required by the LTP guidance.

4.2 The Government guidance requires LTPs to be written in a tightly prescribed format. All strategies and issues should be presented in terms of how they would help to achieve the Government's four shared priority areas of accessibility, congestion, safety and air quality. There should not be separate sections on individual modes, such as buses, cycling and walking, or on wider policy objectives, such as quality of life. Instead, these issues should be covered within discussions of the four shared priority areas.

4.3 In order to comply with this rigid structure, the following overarching vision for the LTP is proposed:

	LTP vision	Shared priority
We want to achieve...	... a transport strategy that enhances quality of life and economic prosperity by connecting people, communities, employment, goods, services and amenities.	accessibility
We will do this...	... by the effective provision, coordination and management of transport networks for all modes of transport and for all transport users, minimising delays and disruption.	congestion
We want to minimise...	... the number of casualties and fatalities caused by the operation of the transport networks, with a particular emphasis on the safety of vulnerable groups.	safety
We want to protect...	...the people, communities and environments that are adversely affected by poor air quality, where transport can be a significant causal factor.	air quality

4.4 This framework seeks to incorporate each of the concepts of the authority's corporate strategy whilst still retaining strong links to the Government's shared priority areas. It sets the provision of services to the public (ie accessibility) as its key aim. Within the LTP, each of the four main elements (accessibility, congestion, safety and air quality) would then be sub-divided into different issues, geographical areas and modes.

4.5 This overall framework is similar to the policy aims and objectives of the first LTP. These were:

Transport objectives:

· To promote sustainable development

· To reduce the need to travel

· To improve accessibility for all, regardless of mobility

· To improve the environment

Transport Policy aims:

· The need to maintain the integrity of the network

· The need to ensure the safe operation of the network

· The need to make best use of the network

· The need to widen travel choice

4.6 It should be noted that the proposed key aim of connecting people, communities, goods and services includes the concept of non-transport connections. For example, greater take-up of broadband could allow more people to work from home or have services delivered to their home without the need for separate journeys. Therefore, the idea of reducing the need to travel from the first LTP is included in the overarching theme for the second LTP although it is no longer mentioned explicitly.

4.7 Government guidance also requires appropriate attention to be given to wider quality of life issues and specifically refers to Asset Management, Strategic Environmental Assessment, the Traffic Management Act and Rights of Way Improvement Plans.

5. Accessibility

5.1 The Government guidance places considerable emphasis on accessibility to employment and services, particularly for the socially excluded. The County Council is required to develop targets in terms of the time taken to travel by walking and public transport to healthcare, education, employment and major food shops. This work is being underpinned by new data and software provided by the Government to measure relative levels of accessibility across the county. Work is currently underway to carry out an accessibility audit of the county. This will help to identify areas of relatively poor accessibility where remedial action could be focused. It is likely that this will require difficult decisions about the prioritisation of resources between different services and users. Further advice on this will be provided when the results of the research phase are known.

5.2 It is proposed to adopt a wider definition of accessibility, in order to accommodate the authority's priorities for quality of life, economic prosperity and the protection of the built, historic and natural environment. The Government's narrow interpretation would be seen as a minimum.

6. Congestion

6.1 The Government requires local authorities to measure congestion in some areas and to determine strategies to tackle congestion problems. The guidance has produced some unexpected requirements in this regard. It had been expected that congestion monitoring and strategies would be required only for the Solent area. However, due to the way that the Government has chosen to measure population, the guidance also requires targets to be set for the Greater Aldershot Area, which includes a number of towns, some of which are outside Hampshire. In addition to Aldershot itself, the area includes Farnham, Farnborough, Camberley and Frimley. The guidance allows provision for authorities to argue that areas should not be considered for congestion monitoring purposes. This matter is being explored with the Government Office to see if a case could be made that the area is too diffuse to be included within the definition.

6.2 It is also unclear to what extent congestion targets should be set for the Solent area. Targets for the number of vehicles entering Portsmouth and Southampton will be needed, but there may also be a requirement to measure vehicle delays across the whole Solent area. The Government guidance says that a decision on this will be made in 2005 and that provisional LTPs "should be developed in a way that will enable congestion targets to be set in the final March 2006 LTPs".

6.3 It is clear that congestion is a growing problem in the Solent area. Regardless of Government guidance, it is considered that the LTP should contain measures to tackle congestion. The Solent Transport authorities have agreed to run a congestion study of the Solent area in 2005. This will also provide information to inform the development of the South East Plan by predicting the congestion impacts of development options and different transport interventions. As with the study into accessibility, the conclusions of this work will not be known until later in 2005.

6.4 It is a requirement of the guidance that authorities should consider demand management measures as a way of tackling congestion, including the use of road user charging and workplace parking charges. It is intended that these should be considered in the congestion study, along with measures such as improved road and public transport capacity. Recommendations on the measures to be included within the LTP will be reported to Members when the Study results have been completed.

7. Funding

7.1 The Government has changed the way that LTPs are funded. The Government has decided to remove the bidding process that featured in the first LTPs. Instead, authorities will be told in advance how much they will receive in each year of the LTP period. LTPs will be derived for this level of funding, rather than an assessment of needs by the authority.

7.2 The disadvantage of this system is that it requires the Government to calculate the appropriate level of funding for each authority before Government sees the LTPs. The Government's stated intention is that allocations will be calculated by a formula that uses easily available data (such as population, road length, road casualties, etc) to take account of the need for authorities to spend on integrated transport. A similar formula has been used for several years to allocate maintenance resources.

7.3 The publication of the formula was originally intended for summer 2004, but has now been deferred to "before December 2005". In the meantime, each authority has been asked to construct its provisional LTP around a set of indicative allocations that have been derived from the first LTP settlements. The following table gives the indicative allocations for the County Council over the five years of the LTP period:

Year	Maintenance £m	Integrated transport £m
2006-07	14.601 (confirmed)	13.093
2007-08	14.893	13.093
2008-09	15.638	13.749
2009-10	16.420	14.438
2010-11	17.241	15.162

7.4 The 2006-07 maintenance allocation is the only figure in the this table which has been confirmed. In particular, the integrated transport figures could change significantly. If the Government introduces its formula in 2005, it is possible that it could produce substantially different allocations for the County Council. There remains the possibility of bidding for reward funding as a bonus for producing a good LTP.

7.5 In addition the Government has announced the establishment of the Transport Innovation Fund (TIF), to support additional innovative and coherent transport measures designed to tackle congestion problems. In particular TIF funding is likely to be available to support bold projects that look to tackle congestion through improved local bus services and demand management measures. To initiate this process, the Authority was required to indicate to GOSE by the end of January 2005 that it would be interested in exploring such an approach. This interest then has to be reaffirmed in the provisional LTPs by setting out, in general terms, what the form of such a package might be.

7.6 It is therefore proposed that the provisional LTP in July 2005 should seek to retain as much flexibility as possible over the deployment of resources. In particular, the County Council should, wherever possible, avoid raising unrealistic expectations about individual schemes that are dependent on the overall level of funding provided. The provisional LTP should discuss types of programmes rather than individual schemes, so far as this is possible within the Government's guidance.

8. Corporate Ownership of the LTP

8.1 The LTP should be a corporate document which seeks to achieve the wider aims of the County Council and not just its transport aspirations. To achieve this, the LTP is being developed through a number of policy sub-groups with officer membership that extends beyond the Environment Department. The LTP is also being framed in terms of the Corporate Strategy and the policy objectives of all Departments.

8.2 There are a number of specific requirements identified in the Government guidance to address wider issues in the LTP. These include incorporation of the Asset Management Plan and the new responsibilities contained in the Traffic Management Act.

8.3 One particular requirement is for the Rights of Way Improvement Plans (ROWIP) to be integrated into the LTP. This will provide the Authority with an opportunity to ensure local transport planning is making the most effective use of the rights of way network, in both urban and rural areas. The ROWIP does not have to be completed until November 2007 and it is therefore impractical to integrate the two plans fully at this stage, but in the meantime the provisional LTP is required to include a short progress report on the Hampshire ROWIP. In recognition of this it is anticipated that a capital programme of improving access to the countryside will be included in the LTP.

8.4 The County Council also has to undertake a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) of the LTP. The SEA incorporates environmental and sustainability considerations into strategic decision making and is designed to ensure that the environmental consequences of the LTP are assessed as it is being produced, hence there is a requirement to consult on the SEA at all stages of the LTP preparation. The first stage is to consult on a scoping report, which has been sent to statutory consultees, English Nature, Environment Agency, Countryside Agency and English Heritage. The opportunity will also be taken to involve other LTP stakeholders that have an interest in sustainability matters. The SEA Scoping Report is being sent out for consultation in February 2005.

9. Structure of the LTP

9.1 Unlike the first LTP, the structure of LTP2 is strongly influenced by the requirements of the guidance. This will produce a much shorter LTP than before, with a stronger emphasis on outcomes in terms of the four shared priorities. The guidance discourages separate LTP sections on individual modes or transport interventions, such as buses, rail, ITS, etc. The guidance also does not allow for geographic sections, such as the strategy for each of the four Transport Strategy Areas in Hampshire.

9.2 It is intended that the structure of the LTP will be:

Main Document

Foreword(s)

Executive Summary

Wider Policy Context

Integration of transport with other policy objectives and issues, such as Education, Health, Social Care, Museums and Heritage, etc. The impact of the National Park status would also be relevant.

Long Term Strategy

How the LTP fits into a longer term strategy, including its relationship to regional spatial strategy and regional transport strategy. Separate sections for each of the area transport strategies. The Solent element of this section would be common to the Solent Transport authorities.

Problems and opportunities

An analysis of the current transport situation and likely developments. Probably best to divide this section into accessibility, congestion, safety and air quality.

5 Year Strategy

· Overall strategy

· Accessibility

· Congestion

· Safety

· Air Quality

The overall approach to be taken in the LTP period, sub-divided by the shared priority areas. This is likely to be the longest section of the LTP.

Targets and Monitoring

The Government guidance sets a limit of 40 targets per LTP - many of which are compulsory. This section would describe the targets, explain what would be done to achieve them and describe trajectories towards the achievement of the targets.

5 year investment programme

The schemes and measures which would form the core of the LTP. Would need to be constrained to the funding levels specified by the Government.

Major schemes

This section should contain details of major schemes being bid for or likely to be the subject of a formal bid during the LTP period.

Appendices

Area transport strategies

Policy documents, eg

Passenger Transport

Rights of Way Improvement Plan

Transport Asset Management Plan

Process documents, eg

Consultation report

Joint working and partnership

Learning from best practice

Analytical assessment of targets and outcomes

Audit documents, eg

Strategic Environmental Assessment

Equalities Audit

Recommendation

That the proposed framework for the development of the second Local Transport Plan be approved.

265Rpt/IR

APPENDIX

TIMETABLE FOR PRODUCTION OF THE LOCAL TRANSPORT PLAN

January/February 2005 Broad themes discussed at Transport Strategy Panels

Decisions on overall LTP strategy and key decisions

First draft produced of key LTP sections

March Report to Cabinet

March/April 2005 Series of consultation seminars with key partners

Seminar on accessibility (see below)

March/April 2005 Transport Strategy Panels discuss draft LTP

April/May 2005 Officer drafting

June/2005 Council consideration of draft

July 2005 Provisional LTP produced

September 2005 Full consultation on provisional LTP

December 2005 Local Transport Settlement

Early 2006 Council considers draft final LTP

March 2006 Full LTP published