The Local Transport Summit (organised by Landor LINKS, publishers of Local Transport Today (LTT), and sponsored by Steer) will take place in Bedford on 4-5 December 2024. The below article formed part of the conference preview, published in LTT on 13 November 2024.
The Local Transport Summit will explore the new government’s priorities, policies and funding decisions and what they mean for transport, travel and our ability to support Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner’s commitment to ‘get Britain building again’, starting with 1.5 million new homes across the country within five years. Here, Steer Director Steven Bishop explores the relationship between sustainable transport connectivity, housing and wider development.
‘Invest, invest, invest!,’ was Rachel Reeves’s mantra in her autumn budget but is money alone enough to solve the UK housing crisis? Can the Reeves, Rayner and Starmer turn NIMBYs into ‘YIMBYs’ as they hope? One of the key commitments for Labour during the election campaign was their pledge to build 1.5 million homes over the next parliament. Where exactly these homes will be built remains to be seen. A focus on sustainable connectivity and mobility, along with access to key services and employment opportunities, must be integral and will provide the greatest return to the government’s missions and Louise Haigh’s strategic priorities for transport.
Steer’s recent work on Letchworth Garden City proves a useful example here. In July, a Strategic Masterplan was approved by North Herts Council for a site on the northern edge of Letchworth set to host 900 residential dwellings, a primary school and a new neighbourhood centre with retail, community and medical facilities. Steer was integral to the ‘movement framework’ of the masterplan, which sets out the existing transport context in Letchworth, how it will develop, and shows how the site will function in a manner that reduces travel demand, encourages active travel, public transport and shared mobility use, strong connectivity to rail hubs, accelerated zero emission vehicle uptake, and manages congestion.
Understanding how to create well-connected, resilient developments that are embraced by the community, contribute to a thriving economy, provide good sustainable access to amenities and public services, reduce emissions, and enhance local biodiversity and the wider environment requires a nuanced and data-driven approach. The government’s proposed changes to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) indicate they understand this nuance and the wider linkages between transport, housing, wider development and their five ‘missions’.
Their ‘brownfield first’ approach to development could see changes to the NPPF that will create an expectation that brownfield development will receive approval. Where brownfield is not available, suitable ‘grey belt’ (a term for previously developed land in the green belt) will be released for both housebuilding and commercial purposes. This concept is not without controversy and wrangling over the definition of this is likely to continue. Then following grey belt comes new towns, and a Task Force to identify principles, locations, and one would assume forms – with a ‘one size fits all approach’ not best.
The brownfield first approach could increase urban density, particularly in areas with existing high frequency and capacity sustainable transport links. £68 million has already been released to select councils for the cleaning up of brownfield sites, and it aligns with the transit-orientated development tack taken by major cities including Manchester, London, Bristol and Glasgow.
This agenda and related challenges were at the heart of Steer’s recently developed Planning Reform Story Map, a resource created to better understand changes to the government's new housing targets, which saw a recalculation of where homes should be built across the country.
The Planning Reform Story Map breaks down the data and works at the intersection of transport, development planning, access and environment, looking for a macro-level view of how housing priorities could intersect with key factors such as public transport and digital connectivity, economy and local service provision, decarbonisation, and protected and natural assets. It identifies brownfield sites and initial interpretations of the grey belt by others.
The next iteration will combine rich data sets to allow partners to identify sustainable grey belt sites based on local priorities, as well as potential locations for new towns of different forms based on similar considerations and potential to justify new infrastructure and services.
Our updated Land Use Transport Interaction or LUTI model, MESH., functions to capture the web of interactions between people, employers, transport and land use, helping us understand how these different elements influence each other. MESH. can be used to assess where large scale housing and employment growth can and will occur, as well as the associated evolving travel patterns and transport infrastructure requirement and resulting carbon and other greenhouse gas impacts. It also places a strong emphasis on social equity, ensuring that the benefits of urban development are accessible to all, such as expanding access to employment opportunities through connectivity.
Maximising urban development can drive economic growth but requires essential infrastructure and services like enhanced district energy and heat networks. and other utilities; data centres, gigafactories, and logistics consolidation hubs; and wider civic infrastructure and amenities. Thoughtfully designed with community input and through coordinated planning reform, it can advance government’s missions – including access to education and childcare, improved health outcomes, and enhanced public transport, shared mobility and active travel.
Sustainable development achieves policy goals through careful land use, connectivity, and integrated transport and planning – prioritising people and places. Getting us there will require disciplined strategic thinking, a higher level of collaboration between national, regional and local government than has gone before, and the intricate balancing of competing interests.
For more information on the Local Transport Summit, visit the conference website.
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