Rail freight needs strategic planning

20th May 2010

Responding to today’s Coalition programme for Government, Freight on Rail welcomes the national planning framework but is highlighting the need for continued strategic planning for rail freight without which it will be difficult to get planning permission for important infrastructure, such as rail freight terminals, necessary for the low carbon economy.

We support the policies to retain plans at the local level to meet local needs and at a national level, using National Policy Statements, to define national policy and establish the need for national infrastructure projects. However strategic transport decisions which affect several regions should not be dictated by local decisions. The danger is, that by abolishing regional spatial and transport strategies and not replacing them with some form of sub-national strategies, it will be difficult to obtain planning permission for medium-sized rail freight terminals which have wider economic and environmental advantages but have local impacts and face competition from other land use, such as housing.

Philippa Edmunds Freight on Rail Manager said,” We welcome the programme to simply and streamline the planning system and integrate transport and spatial planning. However, strategic transport decisions need to be taken at the right level otherwise schemes, such as rail freight terminals, which have regional economic, environmental and social benefits, but face local opposition, will not get planning permission.”