Freight on Rail Response to DTLR Planning Green Paper: Delivering a Fundamental Change

March 15th 2002

Freight on Rail welcomes the opportunity to comment on Planning: Delivering a fundamental change.

Definition of Freight on Rail
Freight on Rail is a campaign working to get goods off roads and onto rail as an important step in developing a more sustainable distribution system.

Freight on Rail is a partnership between transport trades unions, freight operating companies, Railtrack, the Rail Freight Group and Transport 2000. It works to promote the economic, social and environmental benefits of rail freight both nationally and locally. It advocates policy changes that support the shift to rail and provides information and help on freight related issues. In particular, it aims to help local authorities through all stages of the process such as planning a rail-freight strategy, accessing grants and dealing with technical matters.

The members are as follows:-

Rail Freight Group, EWS, Freightliner, Railtrack, RMT, ASLEF, TSSA and Transport 2000

Rail freight traffic has grown 40% in the last five years, and the Government’s Ten-Year Transport Plan published in July 2001 expects in a further 80% growth in this period. Without this growth the government will not reach its congestion or pollution reduction targets.

In order to achieve the Governments target growth for rail freight it will be essential to develop more terminals and distribution points to cope with this growth.

We need a system that fully engages with the people so that planning is be a positive tool rather than a negative brake on development.

We support the aims of the Green paper: -

• To simplify the planning system
  
• To speed up the process.
  
• To make it fair and open
  
• A proper balance between economic development and thriving communities

We accept the need for change and in particular to encompass the following: -

• Make plans more up to date and consistent with each other so that national planning guidance is in tune with regional planning which filters down to sub regional and local level
  
• The decision making is too slow and too variable between LPAs
  
• Outcomes are unpredictable
  
• Plan review too expensive and takes too long
  
• Appeal and call-in decisions too slow.

A successful system will promote economic prosperity but needs the confidence of many different groups – all concerned must be able to make their voice heard. “Customers” of planning departments have a right to user friendly service with the knowledge that applications will be dealt with efficiently and predictably.

Delays due to bureaucracy are bad for business. We need a system that is capable of reaching decisions that command public confidence and are seen to be open and fair. Communities and developers both want certainty out of the planning system.

We support the proposed change to abolish twin-tracking and repeated applications.

We also support the setting of statutory targets for delivering decision on call-ins and recovered appeals.

The rail network runs across regional boundaries and provides a service for the whole nation and planning needs to reflect this, so national, regional and local policies need to be fully integrated. In preparing Community Strategies, Local Authorities must pay due attention to national and regional needs in the developing of the new Local Development Frameworks.

We support the principle of strengthening regional planning but believe it is vital that land use planning remains integrated with transport planning. We are in fact calling for transport policy to be better integrated with land use planning than currently takes place. It is far from clear how the integration between land use and transport will occur in practice. At a regional level, the relationship between Regional Transport Strategies and the new RSS needs explaining, while at a local level the mechanism by which LTPs are tested to see if they further the aims of the LDF is unclear. We are concerned that the plans to abolish country structure plans will cause a gap at the sub regional level and put devolving powers for plans at too low a level.

There is a danger that abolition of the structure plan will mean that significant powers over strategic planning policy will be in the hands of un-elected regional planning bodies. The regional tier of planning must be directly democratically accountable. It is not clear what the benefit will be of replacing Regional Planning Guidance with Regional Spatial Strategies (RSS’s).

Then there is the question of who will prepare the RSS and who will become the accountable body for the RSS. Again if this task is taken from County Council there is a danger of loosing that body of knowledge and skill they possess at handling regional issues and the imposition of a long time scale as the new body is set up to deliver this task. The position of County Councils in these changes appears unclear set against the responsibilities of regional development agencies. It is essential that responsibilities are clearly defined and that another layer of bureaucracy is not added to the system. With this fragmentation companies involved with rail freight nationally will now have to deal in detail and depth with lower tier authorities where previously County involvement would take place

The opportunity for proposals to fall between RSSs, sub-regional plans, and LDFs would appear to be significant. This would be exacerbated in areas where some of the County is the subject of a sub-regional strategy while other areas are not. In addition, how a LDF will be able to take a sufficiently strategic approach to traffic management is left unanswered.

We believe that the current proposals do not give enough detail to establish how the operational details would work in practice.

Guidance: Planning Policy Guidance Note 12 & 13 Transport are key mechanisms for ensuring the integration between land use and transport

These proposed changes are summarised in the diagram below.


The Planning Green Paper makes no changes to Local Transport Plans, although it notes that, in future, these would need to be consistent with the RSS.

The fact that it is proposed that Counties retain mineral and waste plan responsibilities will mean they will find it more difficult to co-ordinate these activities with other aspects of land use planning that are devolved to the lowest tier under these proposals.

The green paper suggests that for development control, planning permission decisions should be made in accordance with the statement of core policies. Unless the Framework is regularly updated to be consistent with regional and national policies there is the propensity toward major differences in approach throughout the country which will lead to inconsistencies and arguments.
 

Fundamental change at national, regional and local level

Freight on Rail welcomes the government plan to improve its own performance within the planning system by the revision of planning guidance to concentrate on key planning policies that should be determined at national level and the production of clear statements of policy on the development of major infrastructure.
 

Changes to Development Control

Freight on Rail supports the aims to be more customer friendly with the following measures:-

• Introduction of a planning checklist so that people know how to submit a good application.
  
• Tighter Targets for determining applications master planning
  
• Better community involvement will be promoted by offering community groups advice on planning. Introduction of delivery contracts for planning of major developments.
  

Measures to seek better and tougher enforcement for planning evaders is welcomed.