Is it really planning when the Treasury decides if a new station opens?

The Planning and Infrastructure Bill, published on 11 March 2025, introduces strategic planning to all of England. We think this a positive step that we have called for over many years, but we have some ideas about how this could work better in practice.

All strategic plans must be accompanied by a strategic transport plan

One of the things we’ve identified going wrong with planning of new homes is the choice of location. We think planning over a wider area, taking into account existing transport and trip generators like employment, is a way to pick better sites.

We know this system works well in London where the London Plan spatial strategy is produced in lockstep with the Mayor’s Transport Strategy. Improvement in transport gets better matched to new housing as a result.

Funding for sustainable transport still needs to be resolved

The reforms leave out the question of funding for infrastructure. The Government has made some promises about public transport and local amenities. It looks like the new system is very much like the old system in terms of what gets built. Is it really planning if the Treasury makes these decisions on a case-by-case, station-by-station, basis?

We know from our research that the Housing Infrastructure Fund, intended to unlock housing, and Section 106 contributions from developers have failed to provide sustainable transport. Some direction to Homes England to prioritise sustainable transport would help here.

But developers and local authorities might like a bit more certainty about funding. Many areas of the country are still not charging a Community Infrastructure Levy which would provide a fixed charge based on size of development and provide income for wide-area strategic projects.

Not big enough to be strategic?

The bill introduces strategic planning boards for areas of the country not yet part of a devolution settlement. The practical effect this will have is it will be possible to pick better locations for housing over a wider functional region and more funding can be pooled for wide-area sustainable transport.

Early indications about potential strategic authorities coming out of the reform however show that some areas will be too small to be effective and convenient for this kind of strategic planning. We think in some cases it will be more appropriate to create strategic planning boards for several, smaller combined authorities in order to create strategic plans over wider areas. The Bill should enable this where appropriate.

This new focus on strategic planning is definitely a positive step forward with the potential to improve decisions about where new homes are located. But as one problem is solved, another has not gone away. Sustainable development will not happen unless certainty around funding of new infrastructure is provided.

#CarDependency #Cycling #Location #Planning #PlanningProcess #PublicTransport #Walking

‘Jigsaw puzzle’ developments are creating car-dependent estates

Our latest report, out today, has confirmed what we had long suspected; new housing estates being built in England resemble a jigsaw puzzle with some of the most important pieces missing – the stations, the mass transit systems and on-site community provision and services.

What is being built in 2025? In search of the station, reveals that housing targets aimed at rural parts of the country and a developer-led choice of location are creating car-dependent estates far away from major urban areas and isolated from good public transport, and that car-based suburban sprawl is now the default model of development.

It concludes that unless we start to build differently we will end up with more and more of this ‘doughnut effect’, whereby everything ends up on out of town greenfield sites whilst brownfield sites lie unbuilt and derelict, and high streets are dying.

What is being built in 2025? In search of the station, looked at nearly 40 new housing developments, including four in Europe (Germany and Sweden), and explored a number of themes, including: whether the development was ultimately designed around the car; traffic generation and its consequences; public transport connections including bus, local rail and trams; and whether there are a range of amenities to walk or cycle to. The report also includes a section on why the planning system fails to deliver sustainable transport.

Volunteers visited each development and looked at the type and mix of housing, transport links, layout and on-site facilities, and concluded that nearly every greenfield development was oriented around the car. None of the large-scale housing greenfield developments visited for the report were on metro or tram systems, buses were in many cases infrequent or insufficient and went to limited destinations, and safe and convenient active travel options did not connect the development to places people wanted to go to. The report only identified one large-scale greenfield development, Poundbury in Dorset, which it considered to be a vibrant ‘self-contained’ community on account of being genuinely mixed use and built from the start for walking rather than driving.

To accomplish a different model of delivering new homes and avoid more car-dependent sprawl, Transport for New Homes makes three recommendations:

• Build transit-oriented developments serving residents from day one of occupation: New developments should be planned around better public transport, connected with metros, tram systems and comprehensive bus networks, available to residents on the day they move in to avoid entrenching car dependency. 
• New homes must be built in better locations: The planning system needs to direct building in more sustainable locations, with decisions on where we build new homes taken with more of an evidence-based approach. Places must be selected that will work with new transport infrastructure and promote regeneration, economic growth and good access to services. A revised National Planning Policy Framework needs to make this kind of wider area planning possible. 
• Deliverable masterplans that create delightful walkable places: Chosen sites for housing need a masterplan designed to deliver walkable places with well connected public transport and the funding to realise the plan. To achieve this, transport and land use planning must be tied together at the local authority level with changes to the current planning system to make this possible.

Read What is being built in 2025? In search of the station in full.

#CarDependency #Cycling #Design #Planning #PlanningProcess #PublicTransport #Walking

Guest post from Mark Philpotts, the founder of City Infinity,

Engineers and transport planners are sometimes criticised for the quality of transport within and connecting to new developments. In some cases this might be entirely fair, but more often I think it is because they are having to play the hand dealt to them, and in my experience they are often invited to the game far too late.

Any development will of course be influenced by local planning policies, and developers have a wide range of motivations that sit behind what they do. What I do know is that they quite rightly want to know what is expected of them, and for any requirements to be agreed and fixed as early as possible, but this can be where some of the transport problems come into play.

A classic in my practice over the years has been cycle parking. Local policy varies widely with the more forward thinking authorities trying to lever in minimum cycle parking standards. While this is largely a good thing, there is a risk that it become a numbers game leading to weird spaces being filled with two-tier racks suitable only for racing bikes. By the time the transport planners and engineers are appointed to assist with submissions, the spaces are often fixed and it’s really hard to get things changed.

I’ve seen so-called accessible cycle parking which includes non-standard and adapted cycles being provided in basements and first floors which are accessed by lifts that are either too small or have single door entry – accessible cycle parking needs people to be able to get from street to parking spot without having to dismount. My message is get everyone in the team appointed early enough so that the correct insight can feed into the whole design process.

There are so many wasted opportunities. For walking, wheeling and cycling, permeability is incredibly important, and development is a fantastic chance to open up new active travel routes. It might not be possible to leave a tunnel to nowhere in a proposed building, but there are certainly opportunities to be had with developments that are on corner plots, that fit between existing streets or which could even feed other areas with a little bit of negotiation with an adjacent landowner. OK, the last one is a little trickier, but bringing in engineers and transport planners with finding permeability as part of the brief really helps, especially as that can help elevate the quality of the transport assessment or statement for a submission.

All of this goes for the local authority engineers and transport planners too. Consultation with them often comes too late and in some cases once the application has been made which puts good ideas up against the clock. In my experience, transport planning teams are not involved in development management enough. I also don’t think people realise how powerful engineers in the highways department can be and this power can be harnessed for better outcomes or it can be a drag on progress. In some cases, the person who reviews planning applications for the highways department ends up as just that, the only person in situations where we need wider experience for better advice and ideas.

I would also like developers to challenge the local authority transport professionals more. If I am a good developer who genuinely wants to leave a place better than I find it and perhaps make my development as attractive as possible, then I want my transport contributions to count. This might be within the site or it might be through planning agreements for off-site works. Maybe developers should be constructing that last little link to their buildings as a high quality cycle track and footway? Yes, it ends at a hostile local authority road, but there’s then a bit of pressure on the local authority to also do better.

None of this is intended to denigrate other professionals in the planning process who have important jobs to do in terms of leading development projects or feeding in to them, but the transport side of all of this consistently fails to deliver. Equally, it cannot be fair to expect developers to pick the slack for decades of missed opportunity, but they could raise their game for sustainable mobility and ensure at the very least, they future-proof their development as much as they can.

Mark Philpotts is the founder of City Infinity, a sustainable mobility design consultancy where he is applying 30 years of civil engineering experience in the public and private sectors to developing
better streets and places. He has also been a writer and blogger for over a decade under the pen
name “The Ranty Highwayman”. www.cityinfinity.co.uk

https://www.transportfornewhomes.org.uk/unseen-power/

#CarDependency #Cycling #Design #Planning #PlanningProcess #PublicTransport #Walking

Time to start the planning of the hexagon that makes up the filling between my "flowers" for my son's pillow (See recent posts from more). I am loving the construction aspect of this! EPP is still a lot of fun and so much faster than one would think! ❤️I am hooked.
#sew #sewing #sewsewsew #sysysy #sying #syglede #søm #sømglede #sydame #sygal #sytilbarn #quilting #quilt #quiltpattern #makersgonnamake #homemade #håndlaget #hexagon #planningprocess #tetris