Agenda item

(Director of Governance) To consider the attached report.

The Committee received a presentation from Matthew Lane, Strategic Development Engineer and Matthew Bradley, Strategic Development Manager from the Transportation, Planning and Development Team at Essex County Council Highways in the role of Essex County Council as Highway Consultee. Mr Lane advised that they were invited to the Select Committee to give a brief overview of the work that they were responsible for within the County.

 

Strategic Development Team Arrangement

 

The Transportation, Planning and Development team were based in County Hall, Chelmsford and consisted of Engineers and Officers who covered twelve districts within Essex. The work they dealt with varied and could be anything from a vehicle crossover on an unclassified road to thousands of houses as part of the Local Plan strategic site allocations, the work can be very varied and on a huge scale. We are their to provide a statutory response as a consultee to all the local planning authorities within Essex. We also respond to Essex County Council Waste and Mineral planning authority which deal with quarries and schools. Essentially we are there to protect the safety and efficiency of the highways network.

 

The Role of the Strategic Development Team

 

Their role was to provide responses to planning applications as a statutory consultee to both Local Planning Authorities and Essex County Council, Waste and Mineral Planning Authority. To protect the safety and efficiency of the highway network and to promote the use of sustainable travel.

 

Consideration of an Application

 

EFDC would consult the Strategic Development Department with an application. It was then the responsibility of the team to look through the application in detail and either contact EFDC for more information or if there was sufficient information to determine the application within 21 days of receipt.

 

Assessing an Application

 

When considering an application, for the majority of proposals, a site visit would need to be arranged and to take into consideration, if the site had previously been considered and there were no changes then the decision would remain as previously determined and a site visit would not be needed.

 

Depending on the scale of the proposal a  transport assessment would be required for 50 or more residential dwellings, to take into consideration the junction impact, site access and sustainable travel in the area. The applicant would employ transport consultants to produce a TA and they would conduct a traffic count and speed data and model the impact of the assessment. ECC would assess the modelling and check that it was done within industry standards. That could then lead on to sustainable travel considerations especially where people want to reduce their vehicle movements and there could be better bus services, good footways and cycle route connections.

 

We consult with a variety of other departments within the Highway Authority for example Passenger Transport and Public Rights of Way to see if traffic calming can be implicated and yellow line provision in developments. Internal roads would be checked with the Essex Design guide making sure they are fit for purpose with appropriate turning.

We also check that new dwellings comply with the Parking Standards, unfortunately we have a different view to the districts and boroughs view regarding the Parking Standards as we have to look at it as highway safety not in the loss of parking.

 

Once we have investigated and completed an application we would then come to our recommendations which would consist of:

 

a)    From a highway and transportation perspective the Highway Authority had no comments to make on the proposal.

b)    From a highway and transportation perspective the impact of the proposal is acceptable to the Highway Authority subject to the following requirements:

·         Must accord with both National and Local Planning Policies; and

·         Conditions/Works to mitigate the impact of the development.

c)    From a highway and transportation perspective the impact of the proposal is not acceptable to the Highway Authority for the following reasons:

·         Contrary to both National/Local Policies;

·         Safety Issues – evidence based;

·         Unable to mitigate the impact of the development.

 

Frequent Highway Misconceptions

 

Perceived traffic impact and speed – we don’t look to assess impact until there are over 50 dwellings as anything smaller would not impact on the highways. If there was a safety measure then we would look at the application.

 

Residential amenity – was a planning issue and the planners would take this on board.

 

Pre-existing safety and congestion issues – we would not be able to refuse this as it was the lawful use of that site. The same with congestion at a junction if nothing could be done to improve it then we wouldn’t be able to refuse,

 

Personal circumstances – we cannot take personal circumstances into account.

 

Mitigation that cannot be justified in line with the NPPF paragraph 204 – necessary, related to and reasonable.

 

Additional Responsibilities

 

Applicants come to us for Pre-Application advice, although we cannot determine the application we do advise them on what they need to do and what we need to see as part of that application.

 

The meeting was then opened up to questions from Members.

 

Q.        Regarding site visits, how many officers are in the team that cover Essex?

A.        There are currently 17 officers in the team that cover Essex there was a vacancy which was expected to be filled soon and the team would be up to full strength with 18 officers. Due to some of the Engineers being engaged on the Local Plan, funding has been secured to employ 2 new temporary posts that have been created for 18 months.

 

Q.        Mr Lane earlier you said that you covered the Epping Forest District are you responsible for any other areas?

A.        Mr Lane replied that along with the Epping Forest District he also covered Harlow and Maldon.

 

Q.        There was a perception, by the general public that you do not visit sites, therefore could you supply the EFDC  officers with information in your report on the date and time that you visited the site, if not could this be arranged as it would help Members to decide on planning applications?

A.        It would depend on what the proposal was for and that he would not necessarily have to visit sites on exact days and times, therefore it would not be feasible to pass on this information. The Officer advised that he attended the EFDC offices weekly and he would do the site visits either on his way to Epping or on the way back to his office. Timed visits were rare, but if it was necessary, for example a busy junction with a proposal of 1,000 new houses to be built, officers would sit out in peak times to see how junctions performed.

 

Q.        Members weren’t aware that Public Rights of Way came under your remit, would you be able to supply EFDC officers with a report if this occurred within an application?

A.        Where a footpath was outside of the red line on an application we would have no comment. If the footpath went through the development and the applicant had made no provision for the footpath to be diverted then officers would act upon this and refer it to the PRoW department as this would fall under their remit.

 

Q.        Passenger transport when Members are advised that a place has suitable passenger transport it would be good to have this in your report. I accept that Loughton has an excellent passenger transport system but areas that are more rural there are limited bus services and no timetables, bus routes stop without warning and there are no tube links. It would help Members to understand what you thought was a suitable level of passenger transport in an area that we were determining an application in?

A.           We would not comment on levels of service unless it was for a large development or a bus stop improvement.

 

Q.        Unless there were more than 50 houses on a development, officers did not seem concerned about the road, the amount of traffic and the parking stress. Members expressed concern regarding the roads that were considered dangerous, where there was a history of accidents, the roads weren’t wide enough for lorries to pass with deep ruts in either side of the road. Why were these overlooked and developments allowed to be built?

A.        When a development of 50+ houses were proposed, we would ask for a transport assessment. A transport assessment would look at the capacity of road junctions. All of the things mentioned regarding road widths and accidents, they would automatically be looked at irrespective of the size of the development.

 

Q.        Was the National Policy Planning Framework (NPPF) the only guide that the officers were guided by or did they use something else like a national guide for highways?

A.        We would always refer to the NPPF as this was our main guide. Locally we would also use our own highways policies which defined priority 1, 2 roads and local roads around the district.

 

Q.        In an already very heavily congested area in our district a retail park was being built, when would you do a traffic assessment for this kind of development as in the past traffic assessments have been know to be conducted in school holiday periods?

A.        We wouldn’t carry out a transport assessment for a large scale development in the school holidays or during the night.

 

Not many large scale applications are applied for in this district as we are mainly a green belt authority. Highway improvements in connection with the Epping Forest Retail Park along Chigwell Lane/Rectory Lane are necessary otherwise that development would not have been able to go ahead. The Retail Park would  attract more traffic but the highway improvements would solve this.

 

Q.        We are somewhat in disbelief when, we as local Members, refuse a planning application knowing that the area is very congested and the chaos it would cause to our local roads. The application went to appeal and because we did not get any back-up from you the appeal was granted in favour of the applicant. This happened in an area in Loughton, Church Hill where an application for a supermarket was granted, on a busy through road, next to a public house and a petrol station. The lorries turn up to make deliveries and cause road blocks and congestion as there was insufficient room to park, they have to reverse into the petrol station to unload the goods for the store, therefore making it difficult for cars to get in and out of the store or petrol station.

A.        Mr Lane advised that he was involved with this proposal for approximately 2 years before an application was submitted. During this time the site had numerous road safety assessments done on it and we felt it was thoroughly assessed. We could not support the appeal because we did not have a technical reason for refusal.

 

Q.        With regard to site lines, what do you require on a less than 50 scheme development as a safe site line on a road?

A.        There was a standard based on speed limit and that was one of the key things we would look at, we work to the NPPF guidelines with regards to safety. We try to secure appropriate visibility for the speed of the road and take into account the lawful use of the site.

 

Q.        Members were concerned that there were no resources to have more of our own independent surveys and data for applications and not have to take the applicants data as our only source and trust that the information was correct.

A.        On the bigger applications we meet with the developer and agree on a scope with them. They go away and get surveys and data from consultants, we ask for the transport assessments to be supplied to us in raw data so that we are able to check that the information provided was truly representative of that application. We also then do our own checks by checking the parameters at junctions to observe the junctions and watching human interaction and don’t rely totally on the traffic impact assessments from the developers.

           

Q.        We sit with a very long Hertfordshire Border and obviously we have concerns about the Gilson development than it will have impact on the road systems both east and west of Harlow as traffic comes through to go towards other parts of the district including London. What input would you have into this, if any?

A.        There was a traffic model that had been produced for Harlow and the surrounding area and we are very much poised to let the developer of the Gilson site pay for some runs of that model with his development put into the middle. The only complication of that was that we had to look at several different scenarios and junction 7a on the M11 had come out of the requirements of the Gilson site and other planned developments in the area. Developers are therefore paying the County Council to employ their own consultants are doing these model runs on behalf of the developers. We are working closely with the officers at Hertfordshire County Council to make sure we are all in agreement with the way forward.

 

Q.        In terms of the process of assessment when it is an industrial application is there any variation in the process?

A.        No, essentially it is exactly the same.