Warning of congestion cost from planning changes

30 Aug 11
Changes to the planning system could increase congestion on roads across the country, with a cost to the economy of £250m, campaigners have argued.
By Richard Johnstone | 31 August 2011

Changes to the planning system could increase congestion on roads across the country, with a cost to the economy of £250m, campaigners have argued.

Campaigners have warned that traffic jams could become more frequent if planning laws allow more out of town developments. Photo: iStock

The Campaign for Better Transport says that the removal of the need to prioritise town centre locations for office developments, under the government’s proposed reforms to the planning framework in England, will lead to many out of town developments.

An analysis published yesterday examined the effect of building 34 new 100‑acre business parks along a 175-mile stretch of the M1 between junction 8 (St Albans and Hemel Hempstead) and junction 47 (Leeds), undertaken by transport consultants MTRU.

The CBT argues that the sites are the ‘kinds of places likely to be targeted by developers under the new planning proposals’, and concludes that traffic levels would increase by 16% on the road, and delays would almost double, from 3.6 minutes per 10 miles to 6.4 minutes, as workers commute by car.

CBT chief executive Stephen Joseph said that research showed that the new planning guidance could damage the economy by allowing out‑of‑town office developments to spring up next to motorways and other big roads.

He said: ‘No one wants to be stuck in Bank Holiday‑style traffic jams twice a day just to do a day’s work. We need to encourage new development, but not at any price and the expense of delays and congestion on transport networks needs to be fully considered when planning new developments.’

The government says that the reforms will introduce a presumption in favour of sustainable developments.

However, CBT wants the government to reinstate the sequential test, which concentrates new development in town centres, to commercial and office development planning decisions, and not just apply it to retail and leisure schemes.

It also calls for the impact a new development would have on traffic and road congestion to be treated as a material consideration in planning applications, and therefore as grounds on which development can be rejected.

There should also be a presumption in favour of locating developments next to existing public transport, or where it can be served by improved public transport links.

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