Transport Committee
Oral evidence: National Networks National Policy Statement, HC 903
Wednesday 19 July 2023
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 19 July 2023.
Members present: Iain Stewart (Chair); Mike Amesbury; Jack Brereton; Sara Britcliffe; Ruth Cadbury; Paul Howell; Karl McCartney; Grahame Morris, Gavin Newlands.
Questions 102–152
Witnesses
II: Richard Holden MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Transport; David Buttery, Roads Strategy Director, Director for Transport; and Dan Moore, Rail Strategy and Rail Analysis Director, Department for Transport.
Written evidence from witnesses:
Witnesses: Richard Holden, David Buttery and Dan Moore.
Q102 Chair: Welcome to our second panel this morning. Minister, could you first introduce yourself and your colleagues for the purposes of our record?
Mr Holden: Of course. I am Richard Holden, the Minister for roads and local transport. On my right is Dan Moore, who is the rail director, and on my left is David Buttery, whom I work very closely with as the roads director.
Q103 Chair: Thank you very much for your time this morning. May I start with just a couple of procedural questions about the NNNPS? Can you say a little bit about why you decided to review the NPS and then take about 18 months to publish the revised draft?
Mr Holden: Thank you very much indeed, Mr Stewart, for having us here today. I will cover both those questions in my response. The delivery of infrastructure is vital for the UK economy, and as a Government we are really committed to getting on with the job. Our road and rail networks are essential parts of our transport system. They connect people and communities and enable the effective movement of freight. They are fundamental to our economy and our way of life, so we need to maintain and enhance our national networks.
There has been a lot of debate about whether there is still a case for investing in roads given net zero commitments and the attitude taken by some of our devolved partners, but the Government’s position is very clear on this. With the steps we are taking through the transport decarbonisation plan, we are acting on the critical issues of emissions from road transport, which means we can invest in our road network. We want to improve the choices for people that they have in their journeys, not ban cars or make life difficult for motorists, as the Secretary of State said recently in his Telegraph article.
We have committed £24 billion during RIS2 for investment in the strategic road network and £96 billion in the integrated rail plan, and we recognise particularly how vital freight is for supporting economic growth. We have launched the first long-term cross-modal future of freight strategy, and I am co-chair of the Freight Council, driving forward its implementation. Through this, we will attract more people to careers in freight and logistics, and boost innovation and the use of new technology in this sector. We have just bolstered supply chain resilience by addressing HGV driver shortages and recently introduced longer semi-trailers to our roads after an extensive 11-year trial.
But we are conscious that infrastructure investments have environmental impacts as well, and we need to ensure that the infrastructure we deliver is compatible with our environmental targets, not just net zero, but in areas like air quality and biodiversity. In answer to your question, Mr Stewart, some of those changes in Government policy that have come forward over the last decade or so are reflected in why we have had to update the NNNPS.
The planning system in England plays an important role in ensuring that we reach this balance of supporting the delivery of new infrastructure but within our environmental goals. The NNNPS is a key part of this, as set out in the Planning Act 2008, and it sets out the need for, and Government policies to deliver, national significant infrastructure projects on the national road and rail networks in England.
The NNNPS is not a spatial plan or a transport strategy, but it is a practical planning document to help with DCOs. I know the Committee is aware of this, but it is helpful to keep mindful of what it is and what it is not. It sets out a statement of the need for infrastructure and provides guidance to developers and decision makers within the planning system.
Our current NNNPS was designed in 2015, but, as I said, a lot of things have changed since then, including our major commitment to net zero, the transport decarbonisation plan and the targets brought in under the Environment Act 2021, which have significant impact, as you will be aware, on RIS3 and also on future rail programmes. It is right that the NNNPS is reviewed in light of these changes.
The draft revised NNNPS is intended to provide a more robust and up-to-date and stable policy framework for planning decisions on major road and rail infrastructure. We have worked with colleagues across Government in reviewing the NNNPS, and in answer to your second question, Chair, particularly in response to things like the Environment Act 2021. That is one of the reasons why we wanted to get this document right and make sure it was in the right place before putting it forward in line with those changes that have been brought forward in the last couple of years. We will continue to keep it under review and progress it now.
Cross-government collaboration is essential in making the NNNPS work as best as it can, and I am very glad that the Select Committee has taken such an interest. We look forward to your recommendations, which will be vital to our work in this area, and to work with you more on this important subject.
Q104 Chair: Thank you. Given that we have five-year programmes for both roads and rail investment, and RIS and control periods for rail, would it be sensible to review the NNNPS on a similar five-year basis?
Mr Holden: We are not against that, Mr Stewart. The key thing is that when major Government policy changes that is when we need to review the NNNPS. In light of the changes in the habitat regulations with the Environment Act 2021 and the Government’s commitment to net zero, we think this has been a particularly opportune moment to look at it. I do not know whether any of my colleagues on rail or road would like to add to the point.
David Buttery: We make clear that we plan to review it every five to 10 years. You have talked about RIS and the rail control periods. Clearly, they are not the same five years, so that presents a bit of a problem if we just have a cookie-cutter five-year programme. I also think, as the Government have acknowledged in the NSIP action plan, that there are ways that we can improve the NPS process. The actual reviewing of the NPS is quite an undertaking, which means that there is a bit of a disincentive to do it. DLUHC is looking at how to improve the process such that we can make sensible revisions in a more smooth and timely way.
Q105 Chair: If you take the roads side bit of RIS where there have been considerable delays, particularly through the DCO process, would it not make more sense to have refreshed the NNNPS in advance of determining the next RIS period?
Mr Holden: That is an important point, Mr Stewart. National Highways, as part of its work on the DCO process, internally reviewed and worked on a lot of the things that it had seen as issues, and you can probably see the results of that from the recent JR decisions regarding the A47, for example, as well as a lot of other big infrastructure projects that have come forward. I think the point that Mr Buttery made is that the road and rail programmes and their five-year windows do not always totally align, nor with the spending rounds. David, do you want to go a bit further?
David Buttery: Certainly. I agree completely, Minister. The A47 judgment is really important because it has demonstrated that the approach of National Highways and the Government to assessing carbon on roads projects is the correct way, and the revised NNNPS reflects that revised way. It is a little bit “chicken and egg” as to which should have come first. Clearly, we can be nimbler within an actual JR process and within policy than we can within the current set review process. It has worked that way. What we have before us is an approach to carbon that we believe is robust and stable, and has now been tested in the courts, so it gives us great confidence going forward that those issues should not arise in the same way.
Mr Holden: Dan, do you have any points to add on that?
Dan Moore: On the five-year control period point, an important point for rail is that the issues covered by the five-year control period tend not to be issues that are covered by DCOs; they tend to be the operations maintenance and the renewal of the network, whereas the strategic rail freight interchange is the right side of the process, and most of the individual things like the small DCO proposals that there have been are also outside the process, so the alignment is not particularly strong in relation to the control period system.
Q106 Chair: Thank you. One potential change that is coming is through the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, which potentially replaces environmental impact assessments with environmental outcome reports from 2025 onwards. Will that require the NNNPS to be updated again to reflect that?
Mr Holden: I know National Highways is already taking full account of the biodiversity net gain statistics. David, do you want to add to that?
David Buttery: The draft NNNPS before us already acknowledges that we know that environmental outcome reports are coming. It points towards that. We do not believe that change, when it is introduced formally, will require us to come back and do this again. One of the challenges with a document like this is that the law and the requirements are constantly changing, so keeping it 100% up to date is impossible unless we review it constantly. What we have done is to try to take as far-sighted a view as we can to make it as robust as possible, and we think we have done that, and we particularly think we have done that on environment outcome reports.
Mr Holden: Obviously, the plan for transport decarbonisation runs alongside the broader NNNPS framework for both road and rail.
Chair: Thank you. Karl, you wanted to come in.
Q107 Karl McCartney: Thank you Chair. This is probably for the Minister and Mr Buttery. Smart motorways, hopefully, have finally suffered an overdue death. If they have gone permanently, can you confirm what you will be spending the money on to level up maybe commuters’ journeys on the roads in the north where 85% of commuters’ journeys involve a car compared to the south?
Mr Holden: You are quite right, Mr McCartney. I represent a constituency, as you are probably aware, with no rail network at all, so all of my journeys are made by road, whether by bus, coach, car, motorbike or other wheeled transport.
Regarding what we are going to do instead of smart motorways, that is for the final rounds of the RIS3 plan over which the Transport Secretary is currently in intense negotiations with the Treasury. The NNNPS is the framework for the DCO process rather than an outline of our plans for the future when it comes to road building. On a fundamental level, we are very much in the same place when it comes to wanting to invest right across the country in our transport infrastructure.
Karl McCartney: Thank you for saying so much without saying too much.
Q108 Paul Howell: Good morning, Minister. One of the things that you have mentioned already is the lack of alignment between the five-year plans for road and rail. Surely, it is in your gift to sort out the alignment of that if you wanted to. But in terms of the whole NPS system, what are your thoughts about the merits of taking an overarching transport NPS with policies for highway, rail, ports, airports, etc. sitting underneath that?
Mr Holden: You make an interesting point, Mr Howell. In answer to the broader point you make about whether we should have a five-year transport strategy overall, we have a cycling and walking strategy, the Bus Back Better strategy, a plan for rail, and a decarbonisation strategy all there, which essentially make up, collectively, the UK Government’s transport strategy, and obviously we have the RIS programme and the rail programmes too. We could put them all together in one document. That is a fair enough request.
Q109 Paul Howell: Part of the point is that sometimes it seems as though there is an overemphasis on road, and we need to be thinking about the modal shifts and the different bits of the way that road, rail and everything else fit together to get a longer-term strategy that is connected and joined up.
Mr Holden: I can totally understand what you are saying. Part of the cycling and walking strategy is about integration. National Highways has KSIs around how they integrate, particularly when you are looking back to some of the historic road schemes where we are retrofitting, essentially, cycling and walking around road schemes, which perhaps back in the ‘60s severed what would have been natural walking or cycling links. David, do you want to comment further on that?
David Buttery: It is important to note that the NNNPS is multimodal, because it deals with both road and rail together. The NPS regime only applies to certain developments. There are size thresholds in terms of how big a road and how big a rail. Developments on public transport or local roads are not caught by the NSIP regime, so in a sense if we put those within an NPS it would not actually mean anything, because their planning is done elsewhere. So what we have done is to put the two bits that are caught by the DCO regime together to try to get that multimodal thinking where it triggers this part of the Planning Act.
Clearly, beyond that, as the Minister said, there is a strategic overlay, which is thinking about the transport system as a whole and making sure that we are making the right decisions to get the best out of it. As the Minister said, that is a strategy point, not an NPS planning document point. There are, as he said, a range of strategies that we think do that and set out a comprehensive vision for what we want to achieve.
Mr Holden: Just to go further, some road schemes like the A66 upgrade or the Lower Thames Crossing are multi-RIS schemes as well in and of themselves. At a certain point, the larger schemes have to go through the DCO process. This will reflect the point at which they go through that process. Some of these schemes will take 10 or 12 years. I do not know how long the LTC has been going on. Some of the very large projects are decades-long from initiation all the way through to planning and then through the construction phase as well. Do you want to comment on that, Dan?
Dan Moore: I have only a brief comment, and it goes back to the point that, for most of the rail programme, none of the £44 billion that the Government announced in December for the next control period will be covered by DCOs; it is just not that sort of regime. The important thing for us is that we absolutely have a coherent vision when it comes to the railway but also that there is very close working within the Department to make sure that we tie up where there are clear linkages, and that is a really well-established part of how we work as a Department.
Mr Holden: I would also say, Mr Howell, that HS2 is done through a totally separate process. As you will know, some of our colleagues are on the hybrid Bill Committees. That is without the DCO process, essentially.
Q110 Paul Howell: You made the comment, which is very apt, that some of these projects take 10-plus years to deliver. Clearly, where the Department could help is in getting the decisions made earlier and quicker and getting the thing started. In terms of the points that were made in the earlier session by Martin Tugwell of Transport for the North, there are examples of situations where there might be four visions as to where you are going to go to next, but all four include certain key parts. How do we set up a system and a process that makes sure that those things that are definitely going to be required, whatever it is that the endgame is, can be started and decided upon, and you can start that process, so that you at least take the decision-making time down to as little as you can, but the physical time takes what the physical time is?
Mr Holden: I totally agree with you, Mr Howell, absolutely. We want to get our ducks in a row when it comes to planning and DCOs, and that is what this document is about, and reflecting those changes in Government policy, which have then impacted, essentially, the planning system. David, do you want to go a bit further on that?
David Buttery: As to getting the vision on the roads side, which is my responsibility, that is very much what the Road Investment Strategy 3 process is about. The Department’s consultation on the initial report by National Highways is live at the moment to understand what we want and to set the right vision for that period. We have engaged extensively with the STBs on that. I am not speaking for Dan, but likewise on the rail side, you have the integrated rail plan, which is thinking about that longer-term vision. All of those things are in place, and, clearly, the results of them, if the scheme is big enough, flow through into this document. It is just about making sure that we are clear on where those dividing lines are.
As the Minister said right up front, the NNNPS is actually quite a practical document. It is for decision makers. For people developing schemes it is a “to do” guide about what they need to do. It is not a transport strategy, and it does not purport to be, but it takes you towards it. A lot of times people would like it to be broader than it is, but it is just dealing with a set legislative role, whereas the RIS process and the integrated rail plan are setting that strategy over the top of it.
Paul Howell: I get all that you said, but I think the more we get to a situation that facilitates quicker decisions and quicker actions the better it will be. I think that has been covered, Chair.
Q111 Grahame Morris: Forgive me, I have a terrible cold. Good morning, Minister, and good morning, Mr Buttery and Mr Moore. I would like to follow on, on those questions about the Government’s aim within the NNNPS. I serve on the HS2 hybrid Bill Committee, and it is a terribly lengthy and onerous process going through the various petitions of objection. That is in addition to the planning processes. I am quite interested in the specifics. We are talking about the generalities of specific schemes.
I do not know if you heard any of the evidence from the previous panel, but they talked about the A66 and the A303 Stonehenge scheme and the huge costs. Minister, you mentioned the Lower Thames Crossing. An enormous amount of effort, time and money goes into the planning process. Do we have any figures? I do not know whether you, Minister, or you, Mr Buttery, would have those in relation to the Lower Thames Crossing as to how much it has cost in planning terms. No actual work has been done yet. There is some slippage in this scheme as well, is there not, of two years?
Mr Holden: Yes. The Government’s policy statement on roads, which the Transport Secretary set before the House, I think, back in May, has pushed the LTC back for two years.
In terms of planning, you are absolutely right, Mr Morris, that it is an expensive part of the process. On the flip side, if you do not do planning properly and get that early planning right, you could end up with additional costs due to judicial review on one side and due to the design not being in the right place on the other side. David, you can probably comment further on the specifics.
David Buttery: I do not have that specific figure on what the LTC has cost in terms of planning, but we can find that out and send it back.
Q112 Grahame Morris: If it is available, if you could, I would be interested.
David Buttery: Yes, I am sure we can.
Q113 Grahame Morris: Can I just come back on the Minister’s answer? Earlier in your opening remarks, you mentioned the impact of environmental legislation, net zero commitments and so on. Is part of the thinking on the review of the NNNPS that there will be alignment on the net zero commitments and that will facilitate fewer problems in the planning process?
Mr Holden: This was alluded to a little bit by Mr Buttery before. When some of the schemes came forward, National Highways had not reflected quite as well as it should have done those legislative changes in some of its DCO processes. It has now done that, which is why we have seen, as I said to the Chair at the start, the A47 scheme successfully go through. It is a bit of a “chicken and egg” situation. When there is a legislative change, we could permanently have an evolving NNNPS, but what tends to happen is that National Highways will respond to those changes, and then that will feed through into the broader strategy. David, am I in the right ballpark on that?
David Buttery: Yes, that is completely right. The issues that we faced earlier on DCOs were around cumulative carbon—basically, the cumulative effects of road schemes against a net zero target and how to demonstrate that we could “afford” this scheme. We have done a lot of work developing that approach. It was tested in the courts on the A47, and the courts said it was robust. That approach is set out here.
Clearly, this sets out how a developer and a planning authority consider those issues in taking a scheme through. It does not determine the choice of how many schemes to do in the first place, which is clearly the most important thing in terms of carbon. The choice of how many schemes to do is for the RIS process. That is for the more strategy-setting piece. This ensures that, as those schemes that are decided come through, there is the right check to make sure that they are affordable.
Q114 Grahame Morris: I know we are looking at the strategy and the bigger picture here, but on the specifics like the A66 scheme where there have been huge issues about cost overruns and planning issues, what has been the problem there? Is it something that was not addressed in the NNNPS?
David Buttery: The main issue has affected both DCOs since about 2020, I think. The A38 Derby junctions was the first scheme where there was an issue. Prior to that, every single DCO, I think, on the roads side had gone through without a problem. It had been a very efficient process. The issue that was surfaced by the A38 Derby junctions was the one of cumulative carbon and the way that the Secretary of State in his decision letter had set out the consideration, which was decided had not been full enough. That is what started the work, and, basically, all of the delays that we have had to date, with the honourable exception of the A303, have been on that cumulative carbon issue.
We think now following the A47 judgment that we have solved that. That was the big planning risk we were dealing with. That has gone, so, as they did before 2020, schemes should just go through the planning process smoothly. It will not mean that people will not challenge schemes—that is still an important part of the process, and that will continue—but it means that we are confident that those challenges should come to nothing. Clearly, on the A303, there are different issues with heritage, so that sits slightly to one side.
What we think we have achieved with this NNNPS is to provide clarity so that developers know what they need to do to put forward a scheme that meets legal requirements. In the 2015 version, there was ambiguity as to how things that had happened more recently should be interpreted. You have the risk that a developer would either not meet updated legal requirements properly or the other risk that they would be so worried that they would over-egg it and do far too much work, slowing down their development.
This gives clarity. It means that people know what they are doing. It means the decision maker knows what they are judging on. It should all mean that it is a more efficient process. We cannot say it will be X amount quicker. It is just making the process that we have run more smoothly.
Mr Holden: It is worth reflecting that the NNNPS basically covers the quasi-judicial role of Ministers when they are making planning decisions rather than the policy framework around which rail schemes and which road schemes to run. This covers that and, as David said, should help in that broader process given all of the different changes that have happened; and now, when people are planning, it can also be reflected in this.
Q115 Grahame Morris: Could you just clarify in relation to the Lower Thames Crossing, Minister? I do not know if you recall that I raised it with you in Transport questions, but we were running short of time in topicals at the end.
Mr Holden: We were.
Q116 Grahame Morris: There is some slippage in this scheme, is there not? There is an additional two years. Could you give any clarity on what is happening now with that?
Mr Holden: Is it still with the DCO?
David Buttery: It is in DCO.
Mr Holden: It would be difficult for me to comment on that aside from what has been made public, which is that the scheme has been put back two years, which was in the written ministerial statement in May.
Q117 Grahame Morris: Does that include the tendering process?
Mr Holden: There will be aspects of that which go on, but David might be able to comment on the specifics.
Q118 Grahame Morris: Because it was scheduled for November initially.
David Buttery: I am not 100% sure on tendering. It is not a project that I look after. I know that there is contracting going on.
Mr Holden: There is contracting going on for all different aspects of it because it is a major project with huge numbers of different contractors that will be coming in at different points. Perhaps, David, we could write to the Committee.
Q119 Grahame Morris: If you are going to write to the Committee with the information on the planning costs if there are changes—
Mr Holden: Whether they will cover the entire—
Grahame Morris: If you don’t mind.
Mr Holden: Of course.
Grahame Morris: I appreciate that. Thanks, Chair.
Q120 Sara Britcliffe: All the future travel demand scenarios in the national transport model point towards high traffic growth. Why not consider and test a wider range of scenarios?
Mr Holden: We have seen significant traffic growth since 2001. In 2019, we saw roughly an 8% increase in road mileage. David, is there a reason why we are doing it in that specific way?
David Buttery: It is probably worth taking a step back and talking about what the national road transport projections are for. They are an aid to decision makers. They are an aid to think about what are possible and plausible futures and to think about what that means. They are not an exact prediction of what we think will happen. They cannot be because there are so many different variables.
There are three things that really drive growth in terms of those traffic projections: the size of the economy—so economic growth; the size of the population—population growth; and the cost of fuel. Those three things make up the vast majority of any forward projection. Most of those things are OBR forecasts, ONS forecasts on population and, I presume now, DESNZ forecasts on fuel. Those are the things that drive. Policy around them has a limited effect beyond those three in terms of what we do.
We have looked at eight scenarios, basically. We could have looked at 10 or we could have looked at 12. There is a point where you have to say, “How many are too many to be useful?” We have tried to do a broad range of plausible outcomes. There is a behaviour change one, which is about where you really drive down on behaviour and modal shift. There is a high economy one where everything is going great guns in the economy and that has a transport impact. We think it is a good range.
Lots of people would argue, “Couldn’t you just do this? Couldn’t you just do that?”, but there just comes a practical point where we have to have a set that we think is good enough. As a Department, we are always open to having the discussion about whether we should have more scenarios or we should have different ones.
It is also important to note that this is just to be useful for decision makers. We are not saying that a policy that would take us below behaviour change is not a policy that we are thinking about. No, these are just giving us broad ranges about what we think the future might be like. It does not set our policy in perpetuity about how we achieve different futures.
Q121 Sara Britcliffe: Given the level of growth forecast for our strategic road network, what element of the draft NNNPS will help to shift that to different networks?
David Buttery: Again, we are probably stepping above the NNNPS in a way, because the NNNPS—
Mr Holden: It is more of a policy question, is it not?
David Buttery: Yes, because the NNNPS is only engaged when you have a project that needs a DCO. There is a prior decision, which is: do we need to have that project? How does that project fit within our broader transport strategy? Should we do that project rather than a rail project or an active travel project? This document cannot really engage with that. It only engages where a decision has been made by Ministers or by a promoter to have a project.
The policy question about what the right balance is between modes and are we doing enough on active travel is engaged in the transport decarbonisation plan and in setting RIS3, which for the roads side at least will very clearly set what we are expecting from the strategic road network. That question is also engaged in Bus Back Better and the cycling and walking investment plan.
We are struggling with the broader strategy, which I think is out there. This document deals with the decisions that come from that strategy rather than setting those decisions themselves.
Mr Holden: It is also important, Ms Britcliffe, to reflect on the fact that the Government want to ensure that people have choice in their mode of transport. One of the things we have done recently is the £2 bus scheme, which is there to try to drive a positive choice rather than a restrictive choice. That is the area that we are working on. We have seen some of the open-access operators on the rail network. I use LUMO regularly to go back up to the north-east, which is good. That is what we want to do. We want to drive change through people making proactive, positive decisions and not in some war on motorists that is happening in other parts of the country.
Chair: Thank you. Jack has a quick supplementary.
Q122 Jack Brereton: Thank you, Chair. It relates to what you have been talking about there and intermodal. I asked the other panel about the interaction with the national strategic networks and the local networks. A lot of the pressure particularly in urban areas like mine in Stoke-on-Trent is from local traffic that is having an impact on the national networks. A number of those local public transport projects could have a beneficial impact. I am working on a project to reopen Meir station as part of Restoring Your Railway. That could have a massive beneficial impact on reducing the traffic on the A50, for example.
Is sufficient consideration being given to that interaction not just between modes but also between local and strategic networks when we are considering where we should prioritise that investment?
Mr Holden: That is very much a policy question. I was delighted to visit with you and the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North recently to talk about some of that bus prioritisation around Stoke and some of that investment going in there, and also to see one of the new road schemes that has been important for the area too. That is slightly more a policy question than a DCO question. David, do you want to touch on that?
David Buttery: You make a very good point. In terms of my responsibilities, as well as this, I have Road Investment Strategy 3 and the major road network and large local majors programme, which is a terrible name, but it is about enhancements and renewals on the local road network. What we do from a policy perspective is to try to bring those things together and think about what is the right balance between investments in the strategic and the local.
A lot of work is going on in RIS3 about how we integrate better with the local network, recognising your point that, actually, the local network can cause problems for the strategic, and vice versa, and solutions to the local can be on the strategic, and solutions to the strategic can be on the local. We are actively thinking about how we get that balance right in developing RIS3 and also thinking about what next for MRN and LLM, because that is a programme that is coming towards its end.
More broadly, on your multimodal point where we are thinking about road schemes coming forward on MRN and LLM, as a core part of the process we think about active travel and Bus Back Better. How does this road scheme help with those issues? How does this investment help with those issues? In the same way, elsewhere where we are doing rail, those considerations also think about what the right thing is for the local area.
Corporately within the Department and within ministerial decision making, we are doing what you suggest. I suppose the challenge for us is making that visible and convincing you that we are making the right decisions.
Mr Holden: The NNNPS is going through this Committee. As soon as you guys feed back, we would like to get it out. That will also probably be a help in the margins to local authorities as they are looking to do their local transport plans as well. Sixty-one per cent. of local authorities have not updated their local transport plans, which were from 2011 to 2021. Hopefully, this will help them in that. The guidance from the Department in that space is coming out quite soon, and that should also help that interweaving of different transport modes.
Jack has a question about his railway station, so I would be remiss, Dan, not to allow you to come in on that.
Q123 Chair: As we still have a lot of questions to get through, can I just ask colleagues and witnesses to speed up their questions and answers a bit?
Dan Moore: I am afraid I do not know the specifics of the individual station.
Q124 Jack Brereton: I will give you the opportunity to go and research that Restoring Your Railway project.
Dan Moore: I look forward to it. I will be racing back to the Department with that in mind.
Q125 Gavin Newlands: My questions follow on from the questions that Ms Britcliffe asked in terms of future travel demand scenarios. Mr Buttery, a lot of the high traffic growth that we see in the NNNPS is down to the forecast of a 30% reduction in driving costs, which is predicated on fuel duty not being replaced as the fleet is electrified. The dogs on the street know that fuel duty will be replaced with something else, so why is the Department going ahead with that scenario?
David Buttery: I suppose I am probably contractually obliged to say that taxation is a matter for the Treasury. Moving beyond that, the policies are set out in the NRTP 22 on firm and funded policies, particularly in the core scenario. It is things that we know are going to happen.
If you look at the carbon side, you can see that in the core scenario we are not compliant with net zero, but that is because, although the Government have committed to the phase-out of ICEs by 2030, the ZEV mandate is what makes that happen, and we have not yet done that. We do not take that into account because we have to be robust and plan for the world as it would be, not as we would like it to be.
On things like fuel duty, the Treasury has been very clear that it has no plans to introduce road pricing. While it acknowledged that there is an issue around fuel duty, it has not said what the answer is, so we cannot just assume that it is a tax on road vehicles. That is why it is not in there.
Mr Holden: It would also be fair to say, Mr Newlands, that, according to the road fuel consumption and UK fleet stats from not that long ago, the essential prediction from the Government is that even by 2035 about 90% of fuel consumption by the UK’s road fleet will be oil derivative. Bearing in mind that we are looking at a planning policy framework for the next few years, probably to take us five to eight years as this one has, you might be looking at one or two before what you are suggesting would even be part of the equation.
Q126 Gavin Newlands: But it is your scenario that talks about a 30% reduction in the price of driving. It is your scenario that talked about this being a rapid reduction.
Mr Holden: Why don’t I just pick you up on that, Mr Newlands? You are absolutely right: it does talk about a reduction in the price of driving, but between 2001 and 2018 we actually saw that miles were up 8% and fuel consumption was down 7.7%, with a quarter more cars on the road, and that is because there has been a huge efficiency within the UK car fleet. That is only going in one direction with internal combustion engines for the future as well, especially with hybrid models coming on.
Q127 Gavin Newlands: We can agree on that, but the Treasury says this direction of travel is fiscally unsustainable. Clearly, after an election we are going to be revisiting this. We all know that that is going to be the case. I am very conscious of time.
The model itself is actually quite complicated. We heard in our first session, I think it was, Professor Goodwin who said it is quite complicated, but the Treasury model says we should be able to access it and put our own assumptions in—i.e. no traffic growth, etc., etc. Are you going to publish the models so that people can put in their own assumptions at some point?
David Buttery: I am not personally responsible for the models, so I would need to take that away.
Q128 Gavin Newlands: That is fine. If you could write to us, that would be good. In terms of traffic demand, just to continue on that theme, we have had a fair bit of evidence suggesting that the NNNPS downplays the effect of induced traffic demand. I will invoke Kevin Costner: build it and they will come. Ultimately, that is the name of the game here.
Transport for the North said the failure to account for induced demand effects has a fundamental impact on decision making regarding the strategic road network. Specifically, it encourages a “predict and provide” approach to persist. Everyone says it is a “predict and provide” approach. What is the Government’s position on taking into account the effects of induced demand from the NNNPS?
Mr Holden: It is not a “predict and provide” approach. The entire NNNPS is looking to move away from a narrative based purely on congestion as a sole reason for bringing forward road development. We are looking at a broader range of issues with the NNNPS. David, do you want to add a little more?
David Buttery: On the specific point about induced demand, within our transport guidance, there is guidance on how induced demand should be considered as part of developing a scheme. We have acknowledged it happens and it needs to be considered as part of the scheme so that a decision can be made in the right way. We have also published a range of research on induced demand. That shows that it is variable depending on the scheme and where you are. What you can broadly take from it is that it is more likely to happen in urban areas. From a strategic roads perspective, although the network is urban in some places and used for local journeys in some places, the vast majority of the traffic is associated with longer-distance journeys, which seem to be less susceptible to induced demand. It is an issue, but it seems to be less of an issue for strategic roads and so less of an issue for the NPS.
Q129 Gavin Newlands: You mentioned congestion. Do you have congestion forecasts for the strategic road network?
Mr Holden: I do not know if we have specific ones on specific areas.
David Buttery: I do not know. I would have to check. Can we write back?
Q130 Gavin Newlands: If you can get back to us, please do. If you do, could you possibly share them with the Committee?
Mr Holden: There are certain areas where there are obvious congestion issues on the road network where we even have road schemes that are currently under way in order to alleviate it. I do not know if we have one across the broader network.
Q131 Gavin Newlands: If you could give them to the Committee, that would be helpful.
David Buttery: National Highways has its suite of KPIs and targets associated with RIS2, which includes delay. I do not know whether delay is quite the same as congestion. I will set out what its current targets are, and you can decide.
Q132 Gavin Newlands: That is fine. I am very conscious of time. Very briefly, my last question, Minister, is to push a little on your assertion that this is not “predict and provide”. Surely, the NNNPS as it stands forecasts future traffic levels and then builds accordingly. It potentially underestimates induced demand. Surely, that is “predict and provide”.
Mr Holden: I do not think that is the case.
Q133 Gavin Newlands: What is your definition of “predict and provide”?
Mr Holden: What we look at is the system on where we are, where things are, as they are at the moment, and then we go through a huge amount of work to validate what we are saying in that space. That is where the road scheme programmes come from. That is very much a policy decision space as to how we tackle that.
A “predict and provide” approach is not what we are driving on. More broadly, the NNNPS is really the planning framework around that. We can argue all day about induced demand. As Mr Buttery said, there is clearly more of an issue in urban environments potentially than there is on the strategic road network. A lot of the time, what you are looking at trying to do with the strategic network is to make things safer. Particularly, you look at junction improvements right across the country. Congestion on the strategic road network is there, particularly when it interacts with local roads. That is not about “predict and provide”. That is about seeing an issue and ensuring it is there through validation and then tackling it. Mr Buttery, do you want to go any further?
Chair: We must move on.
Q134 Ruth Cadbury: In Mr Brereton’s example about Stoke, a lot of the SRN traffic is local traffic. I can see that in London. As other witnesses have told us, if there were adequate alternatives, many of those short journeys might be taken by public transport, which particularly is disappearing outside London. To what extent is modal shift incorporated into your predictions on the roads network?
Mr Holden: As I have said, between 2001 and 2018 we saw a quarter increase in car ownership across the country. David, do you want to add anything?
David Buttery: Stepping back, it is important to note that we have targets for cycling and walking to be 50% of journeys in urban areas.
Q135 Ruth Cadbury: Not growth in one and growth in the other, but modal shift from one to another.
David Buttery: Our targets on walking and cycling are predicted on—
Q136 Ruth Cadbury: I am not talking about walking and cycling. I am mainly concentrating on public transport.
David Buttery: Are you talking about rail and bus?
Q137 Ruth Cadbury: Buses, trains and active travel—a modal shift.
Mr Holden: In fairness to Mr Buttery, Ms Cadbury, a huge number of journeys and the overwhelming majority start with walking or cycling. A huge number of journeys are on that. You cannot really exclude that.
Q138 Ruth Cadbury: Sorry, I was not excluding. I was asking the question: to what extent, Minister, is modal shift incorporated into your projections on the roads network?
Mr Holden: On a general policy point, I am not interested in trying to drive people from one form of transport to another. I want to have choices for people to make differences in their journeys. I am not going to make life impossible for motorists, especially when we are looking at a situation where you are looking more broadly at decarbonising the transport network over the coming years as well.
David Buttery: In terms of the NRTP 22, modal shift is recognised in there and is pushed to the hardest limits in the behaviour change. Within that fan of possible futures, modal shift is having the biggest role in the behaviour change one. Clearly, as I said before, this is just about how the world might be. The decisions that sit outside the planning regime are around how you make different worlds happen. Obviously, this planning regime in and of itself does not drive modal shift. The decision to choose to invest here rather than here is the thing that drives the modal shift.
Q139 Ruth Cadbury: Yes, and each person’s journey is dependent on its availability, efficiency, speed and safety. Our other witnesses have said that one of the problems is the silos within the Department for Transport where roads planning is in one place and rail planning is in another, public transport in another and active travel in another.
Where is that bringing together of modal change that actually reflects real people’s day-to-day decisions about their journeys that actually happen and therefore can be predicted? It does not seem to me that it has. I need to move on to the other questions.
How will the draft NNNPS achieve net zero by 2050 given the concerns of the Climate Change Committee?
Mr Holden: We have had a huge push. Obviously, this is a planning document for the next few years rather than all the way through to 2050, but we recognise that broader commitment alongside the transport decarbonisation plan. This is a planning document, essentially, to reflect all of that environmental legislation that has been brought forward to help make those decisions in the correct way, taking into account all of those factors that you mentioned, Ms Cadbury. This is not the policy plan; this is how we reflect all those improvements in legislation regarding the environment that we have seen over the last few years, essentially.
David Buttery: The policy plan is set out in the transport decarbonisation plan and in the carbon budget delivery plan that the Government published as a whole at the end of March. It sets out how all the different sectors of the economy will get to net zero.
Q140 Ruth Cadbury: How will decision makers make decisions in the context of the binding carbon targets? What does it mean in practice? Maybe you could give us some specific examples of how you expect schemes to look different as a result.
David Buttery: That is going back to the A47. That was the big question there. It is: how does the Secretary of State as the decision maker take into account the carbon implications of a road scheme against the broader transport carbon budget? The NNNPS sets out the process by which the developer of the scheme sets out the long-term carbon and then how the Secretary of State will look at that, look across everything else that is happening in transport and make a decision.
In this document we cannot basically apportion all carbon between now and 2050 and say, “This is exactly for that scheme in 2040 and this scheme in 2030.” The Secretary of State has to make a judgment at the time of the decision, looking forward with a reasonable expectation about what is going to happen. This allows him to have the right information to do that. It does not make the decision for him, because ultimately that is his or her decision as decision maker at that point.
Q141 Jack Brereton: In terms of the drafting of the NNNPS, has that taken into account those recommendations that came out of the Climate Change Committee in determining how that document has been formulated?
Mr Holden: The transport decarbonisation plan sets out that clear path for us towards net zero on the road investment strategy and around the actual vehicles on the network and making the broader network fit for the future. On the specifics, this comes back to what David said about the A47 scheme and how we are really factoring in those issues now. They will be in RIS3 with the biodiversity net gain and further measures on carbon reduction.
David Buttery: The CCC’s latest recommendations came out after this consultation draft was published, so clearly we could not have taken them into account 100%. This is a consultation process. We have had, I think, about 500 responses. We are having this scrutiny. The idea is to improve.
Q142 Jack Brereton: So you are going to reflect on this.
David Buttery: We will reflect on it, certainly. That is not to say that we will accept what it has recommended, because, clearly, we need to think about it, but we will definitely reflect on it as part of this process.
Q143 Jack Brereton: In terms of the wider environmental considerations, what role has air quality taken in considering that within the NNNPS?
David Buttery: The NNNPS sets out the legal requirements around air quality. We have the existing requirements around nitrous oxide. We have the new targets that have come in as part of the Environment Act 2021 around PM2.5. It sets out what a developer needs to consider to ensure that the information is right such that a decision maker can consider whether they are compliant with those targets.
Q144 Jack Brereton: They are much more onerous than it was previously, because there has been a shift in the importance that has been given to this issue.
David Buttery: Yes. The PM2.5 is clearly new and is more onerous. DEFRA as a whole is thinking about how you achieve those targets. It is important to note that, while transport is a contributor to PM2.5, there are many other contributors. There is a little bit of a question about how you share achievement of that across the economy. There is quite a lot that comes from industry, quite a lot that comes from domestic, and then a chunk that comes from transport.
Mr Holden: This also plays into things like noise, which DEFRA reviews every five years as well and plays into our plan as well as air quality. There are multiple different environmental factors. Another is water, which we are now working with DEFRA on as well. There are lots of different other policies that will flow into the planning framework all around different environmental mitigations, which have increased their presence over the last few years and which we are keen that transport plays a crucial role in addressing as well.
Q145 Chair: Thank you. We have heard evidence that the draft NNNPS will result in even more legal challenges to major highway schemes on environmental grounds rather than reducing them. Do you accept that?
Mr Holden: I really hope not and I hope not on the basis that what we are doing with the NNNPS is formalising particularly for road. The NNNPS plays into rail but in a more limited way due to the number of schemes taken forward through that route. We are formalising a lot of the updates that we have had over the last few years, particularly around the recent decision on the A47 scheme. The A303 scheme decision has a lot of reflection on the basis of what happened on the A47 scheme decision. David, do you want to go a little further?
David Buttery: I do not think this will result in more successful legal challenges. By clarifying things, it makes it easier to dismiss JR claims that are ill founded. We cannot control the number of challenges that come forward. Clearly, we need to recognise that there is increased scrutiny and activism in this area. We do not, unfortunately, believe that publishing this document will mean that those challenges will not come forward. We think this gives us a more solid basis on which to say to a court at the permission stage, “This is clearly without merit, and you can dismiss it.” That would be our position.
Q146 Mike Amesbury: Picking up on those points, could public confidence be restored somewhat if there was more scrutiny of the alternatives before we got some major scheme? A lot of things seem to be done behind closed doors with the alternatives looked at by departmental and planning officials. It is something that the Transport Planning Society has argued for.
Mr Holden: As far as individual schemes go, having looked at them, I generally find that there is quite a lot of public consultation, but, David, what would you say?
Q147 Mike Amesbury: I will give you an example. There are a number of alternatives suggested for the A66, but they always come after the major scheme has been approved because that is now rated amber. According to the Department’s own assessment, it is not value for money, so it is poor spend of public money. There are problems now with contractors around the construction of it. It is considerably overspent and considerably overrun. If there was more scrutiny of a scheme such as that and others, undoubtedly, pre-scrutiny, that was resourced with changes to the planning system, maybe we could turbocharge the whole process and actually be more transparent and minimise legal challenges.
David Buttery: Is your concern here route alternatives in terms of different roads or modal alternatives in that it should not be a road at all, because they are two slightly different answers?
Q148 Mike Amesbury: There are a number of suggestions around junctions and changes to that particular scheme and speed, but, in general, using that principle, more scrutiny and more options for public engagement at the initial stage around alternatives.
David Buttery: As part of the standard development process for a strategic road scheme, there is an option phase. There is a lot of work done looking at different options before you get to the preferred route announcement, which sets out the choice, and there is a lot of public engagement and consultation. The risk and the challenge in having lots of different options out there is in terms of blight in what different communities think will happen and the impacts that that has on them. We need to be mindful that we do not want to blight the whole of the north of England by having five potential different routes, all of which will have different impacts on different communities.
We think that the process that we have as to that options phase, the consultation that is needed and the route is sufficient to allow Ministers to choose the right option. Obviously, there comes a point where you have to make a decision and you have to choose an option, because you cannot keep them running forever up to the end of the process.
Mr Holden: There is also a balance to be struck here. If you said you wanted to do a new cross-Pennine route, you could say we could do the A65, the A66 or the A69 as three of the cross-Pennine routes. The problem is that, if you have too many options at a very early stage, you are potentially blighting three huge, different parts of the country: the Newcastle-to-Carlisle link; the Penrith-to-Darlington link; and the Leeds area up to Settle/Carlisle, the more southern link. There is a danger in that. There is also a financial consequence of that with blight issues and holding back other development in those areas, which you might want to progress as well.
The broader point that you make about community engagement, Mr Amesbury, is absolutely right, because trying to get people on board from the earlier stages is vitally important. You will always have some concerns about that with individual people and communities in particular areas, but you have to have some form of narrowing of the scheme. As Mr Buttery says, you would end up potentially blighting an entire region if you said, “We want to do a new transport link,” then everybody gets worried about it and you end up with legal challenge right across the board.
Q149 Ruth Cadbury: When one travels along the French motorways, you can see that there is a clear pattern of full-service service stations and the light-touch ones in the interim every 10 km. Yet in the UK, and we heard this particularly during our inquiry on support for freight travel and drivers, there is a wholly inadequate system that is dependent on the private sector being able to get land ownership for any investment period and permissions to develop adequate services for drivers and passengers.
Do you think that the NNNPS should incorporate these ancillary services as part of its core ask for road projects?
Mr Holden: There has been an issue with provision for HGV drivers. I have some large haulage firms in my own constituency that I regularly see when I am driving up and down the A1. It is slightly more of a policy question on how the Government deal with freight.
Q150 Ruth Cadbury: That is why I am asking you.
Mr Richard Holden: Exactly. We have done a really big piece of work on helping those who want to put in freight service stations. In fact, we have given them a “how to” planning guide. Hopefully, in the next few months—
Q151 Ruth Cadbury: Is it a “yes” or “no”? Should it be incorporated in the NNNPS?
Mr Holden: What you are suggesting is that this should be a policy decision put into planning, which is a slightly different question.
David Buttery: There are two things. Should those schemes that meet the thresholds for DCO consider lorry parking facilities as part of them and what they could contribute? That is part of the development of the scheme and those are questions that we ask. Should all lorry parking facilities be part of the DCO process? In the same way as rail freight interchanges, should we have a specific bit in here? Our current view is that, no, we should not. Because the DCO process is meant for big infrastructure, it brings a lot of the assessment work and the public engagement up front. For a developer, it is actually quite an expensive process, and for that expense you get the benefit of a decision made relatively quickly. Most of our lorry parking providers are small private firms. The risk that making them go through the DCO route would present to them is quite significant. The risk is that they just would not come forward.
Mr Holden: We are working with private sector firms in the lorry parking space at the moment. We have a package where we are providing with Government money about £100 million of investment in that space. That, as a total, will be looking at a large number of sites. If we put each of those through the DCO process rather than through a local planning process, that would probably delay the improvements for lorry drivers by quite a significant period of time. Some of those relatively small lorry parks just would not even start with the process, which is one that is generally better handled by local planning.
As part of the broader question around RIS3 and the strategic road network and how we ensure that there is adequate charging or hydrogen for the future for the HGV sector, I am sure that is something we would be happy to write back to the Committee about.
Q152 Chair: There is one very last question I just want to touch on. Some transport schemes, particularly rail ones, are large and complex but do not meet the threshold to be considered as nationally significant and have to go through the Transport and Works Act process. Should the NNNPS be clearer in how it can be applied to those schemes?
Dan Moore: My view on this is that the system is reasonably clear already. Ultimately, if it does not meet the thresholds in relation to the Planning Act, it is a Transport and Works Act scheme. It is very clear to promoters exactly where they need to go. For my mind, in relation to both rail schemes and strategic rail freight interchanges, it is pretty clear. There is clearly the additional complexity of a hybrid Bill in the very complicated circumstance. That is an additional point. But, again, as much as they are extremely significant points, they are relatively rare. I have not heard a large call over the years for a substantial change there.
Chair: Thank you very much. I thank the three of you for your time this morning. We will spend the summer preparing our report and advising you in the autumn. Thank you again.