As the government plans to build 1.5 million homes in England within the next five years, concerns have been expressed this will help fuel a car-dependent culture as more new developments are created without adequate transport links.
Such a bold housebuilding target is welcomed in many quarters. However, preventative action is required if achieving it is not to come at the expense of aims to enhance sustainable transport, it has been claimed.
The new administration hopes to have allayed concerns with proposed revisions to the National Planning Policy Framework, which were out for consultation until last month.
However, while some aspects of the changes were welcomed, they did little to quash fears that an upsurge in new mini-conurbations connected only by roads will not have a detrimental effect on the bus sector in the long term.
Campaigning group Transport for New Homes (TfNH) welcomed the document’s guarantees of infrastructure development for the green belt or newly termed “grey belt” areas, which make up around 12% of the land nationwide.
However, it points out that a very small proportion of new development will take place on land with this designation. It wants those guarantees applied to all greenfield land, of which 91% of the UK is made up.
TfNH has long campaigned against the proliferation of car-dependent housing estates built away from jobs and other vital services which, especially without good transport, increase traffic and congestion.
Its Director, Steve Chambers, points out a perceived positive in the NPPF reforms that, when it comes to infrastructure guarantees, the proposals cover green belt area rather than only the earlier mooted “new towns”.
He says: “At first glance, it looks really good, but the reality is, even if they were to achieve their housing targets, relatively little of that would be on green belt so this NPPF update, taken as a whole, the good bit just won’t apply. We think that’s the basic problem.”
He adds that the document is written in such a way that it is easy to circumvent planning guidelines.
“It’s a bit like the Bible — you can easily find a passage to agree with your view,” he says. “It sounds good but, if there are other parts of the NPPF that can be used to nullify them, there’s not much point it being there.”
‘New approach’ needed
Turning his attentions away from the NPPF, Steve adds: “We also think more generally that a new approach is needed. The locations that are chosen for housing at the moment are poor locations for a whole range of reasons.
“We think this will just continue that.” TfNH is soon to publish a “state of the nation” report into the current situation and Steve says the early indications are that it will show a worsening situation due partly to cuts overall to bus services.
One prominent bus figure who is fighting the corner of sustainable transport’s place in future building is Ben Colson, who is a former Chair of both ALBUM and Bus Users UK. The founder of Norfolk Green, which was bought by Stagecoach, talks of a “disconnect” between the Department for Transport and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
The locations that are chosen for housing at the moment are poor locations for a whole range of reasons. We think this will just continue that – Steve Chambers
He adds: “The structure of government says that transport falls to the local transport authority — and they are higher-tier authority, yet planning policy and even parking policy fall to the lower tier, the local planning authority. You immediately have a disconnect that is baked in as a result of years or decades of government policy and practice. Planning and transport need to be brought together.”
The trouble with Section 106
“Section 106” obligations, where a developer must pay for facilities such as bus services, are designed to combat the problem.
However, these only come into force when a certain number of residents are in situ, by which time hundreds of people could have decided to rely on cars due to a lack of public transport. Even if buses are in place, if they are not frequent enough, they do not solve the issue.
Steve says: “What we notice again and again, even the few good examples — one good example is Bicester Eco Village — they had money for a bus route, but they did it every half an hour from day one and then went up to 15 minutes once they had so many people.
“That [instead] needed to be 15 minutes from day one because that frequency wasn’t good enough for them, so they were driving.”
Operators … have got to open lines of communication directly with the local planning authority. They’ve got to be talking to them so that they also understand that there are implications and outcomes – Ben Colson
Ben has similarly seen both bad and a few good examples of transport planning across the country. He says: “I can think of two in Andover, where you’ve got significant new developments away from the central area and away from the local railway station, even though in both cases the railway passes very close by. And yet they are almost entirely car-dependent.
“Then you can look at others on the other side of the coin, like the big new development on the outskirts of Exeter, which actually has a completely new railway station associated with it on the Waterloo to Exeter line and there are bus services going there.”
Ben uses the example of his own locality in Norfolk to illustrate a problem with the proposed NPPF revisions. “In the latest changes is [the move] to reduce the amount of development in major urban centres and scatter it more across the country.
“The area I live, most of it is purely rural, no shops, nothing. We’ve got to have — compared to the last government’s house-building targets for this area — a mandatory target of 88%. In an area where there are no extra jobs coming.
“That means people have to travel further to get to work, health services, education, retail and, therefore, you’re actually moving people away from where job creation is greatest — the city regions.”
CPT response
The Confederation of Passenger Transport (CPT), in its response to the consultation, called for a “bus-first” approach within the framework.
Alison Edwards, CPT Director of Policy and External Relations, says: “Only a ‘bus-first’ approach enshrined in the framework will ensure that the planning system delivers new towns and housing developments without further embedding car-dependency.
“Placemaking with ‘bus first’ will persuade more people to use buses — delivering healthier, greener, and better-connected communities.”
Among the calls, CPT says developers should “design proposals to meet housing and infrastructure needs with bus infrastructure already integrated as an immovable part of the plan”, “design future road use proposals with buses and coaches prioritised” and restrict parking to promote public transport use.
It says planning authorities and local governments should bring bus operators into discussions at the earliest opportunity and “remain cognisant of the need to provide improved bus and coach infrastructure in already existing developments and urban areas”. It also notes a shortfall in Section 106 as a solution, “where the agreements are overly prescriptive”, particularly with regards to establishing a bus route for insufficient time for it to be commercially viable.
DRT not seen as the answer
Demand-responsive transport (DRT) has worked as a solution for some new developments. However, both Steve and Ben agree that any benefits of DRT are not specific to reducing car-dependency.
“DRT does not and never will, in my opinion, provide a viable strategic alternative to the car for a journey to work,” says Ben.
Steve adds on this: “In some places, DRT has led to a fixed route being put in, which is great. So, there is a role there in the early stages of building for showing demand. But it’s very rare that we’ve seen a pattern of development that actually suits DRT. It definitely isn’t a cure-all.”
The move towards franchised services and local authorities having direct responsibility for bus services may not substantially change the outlook either. Steve says: “The places that are best-positioned to take advantage of franchising [such as the big cities] aren’t the places where we’re building new homes.”
Operators’ role
Regardless of how local planning reforms pan out, bus operators need not just accept the status quo, highlight Ben and Steve.
Communication is seen to be key and Ben says it has to be appropriately directed: “Operators tend to talk to their local transport authority and that’s understandable.
“They’ve got to open lines of communication directly with the local planning authority. They’ve got to be talking to them so that they also understand that there are implications and outcomes and, therefore, they can start planning in positive rather than negative outcomes from the outset.
“If you look at, not only this issue of the NPPF but also the previous three, they also say that quality public transport must be planned in from the outset; the only way we can achieve that is by operators talking directly to the local planning authorities and not presuming that the local transport authorities, that higher-tier authority, will do it on their behalf.”
For Steve, it is early communication that is particularly important. “Operators need to get involved in the local planning consultations as early as possible. When we’re planning new houses, we need to have them in places where it’s useful for routes and that’s where bus operators come in, because they know what is a viable pattern to run a route and that needs to be fed in at the earliest possible stage.”
