24-25 SB1009 PB Transport 18/9/09 11:36 am Page 24
CORPORATE STRATEGY
Supply chain
SPEED UP,
SLOW DOWN
New houses, new rail links, eco-towns... Delivering the homes and transport infrastructure for Britain’s future
needs was always going to be a massive challenge. But, asks Rachel Skinner, are the Government’s stringent
carbon reduction targets – and the recession – making optimistic development plans simply unrealistic?
T
he challenge facing the UK’s public and To accelerate the planning process further policy shift towards sustainability and, most
private sectors to develop a residential for such major sites, the emerging recently, a desire to achieve low-carbon infra-
infrastructure to meet current and Infrastructure Planning Commission aims to structure and solutions. This is primarily driv-
projected needs is truly daunting. Not only do help create a faster and fairer process for tak- en by the Government’s 80% reduction target
we urgently need more housing stock to ing the big decisions that affect our national for greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. This
support social and economic growth, but we infrastructure, and the economy as a whole. new dimension is evident throughout the
must deliver this in the light of serious long- However, even before the recession hit, planning system, affecting key aspects such as
term transport challenges. planners were questioning the realism of the the delivery of infrastructure to support trans-
And just to make all these challenges a little growth targets we have been aiming at, as they port and movement in particular.
bit more difficult, we must now do this within would require sustained delivery rates similar While commendable and clearly essential, it
the Government’s ambitious – and absolutely to those of the 1970s, when local authorities is difficult to reconcile this additional sustain-
necessary – framework to achieve substantial contributed nearly half of the new market ability requirement against the general thrust
carbon reduction targets in the face of climate supply through major council house building to speed up delivery. In delivering the eco-
change. It is therefore an unhappy coincidence programmes. No such luxury exists in terms town strategy, there was a firm expectation
that for the immediate future we must achieve of delivery mechanisms now. that in transport terms, a large proportion of
substantially higher levels of sustained hous- So, in practice, where are we now? In sum- movement would be self-contained within the
ing growth than ever before while in the grips mary: falling short in almost all cases. towns themselves. This was intended to reduce
of a severe and ongoing recession. pressure upon surrounding – often highly
To meet our growth targets we still need to congested – multi-modal transport networks.
build around a quarter of a million new homes
each year, representing a 40% increase in the
numbers built during the relative boom times
of the past decade. This challenge has been
‘
Even before the recession hit,
Clear targets were also established that aimed
planners questioned the realism
specifically to reduce car use to levels below
of the growth targets we have 50% at each proposed site and to assure that
been aiming at, as they would
the overall end-product was carbon neutral.
supported by a package of initiatives over In practice it has been interesting to note
recent years to speed up delivery. Leading the
way have been regionally-driven increases in
development allocations directed through the
’
require 1970s delivery rates that due to the self-promotion process used by
government to identify the initial eco-town
Taking just one example; published infor- ‘longlist’ from which shortlists were drawn
Government’s 15-20 year Regional Spatial mation for the Thames Gateway Growth Area up, many of them not only struggled to meet
Strategies, which also include transport strate- shows that growth targets are far from being these requirements, but would require sub-
gies. There has also been a continued focus on met. Data from 2005 showed a potential gap of stantial transport infrastructure. Designed to
Growth Areas, allocated Growth Points and 65,000 homes against targets in the gateway serve routes between the proposed eco-towns
New Growth Points – a bottom-up approach area alone, unless the build rate was increased and existing centres, these transport measures
that makes funding and support available for substantially, and in a sustained manner, to were said to be necessary in order to make the
local communities to pursue large-scale sus- 2016. This position has no doubt been repli- new towns sufficiently attractive in economic
tainable growth, including new housing. cated in many places across the country, while and practical terms for development.
And, most recently, there have been highly the current recession means the gap is now Some of these issues still plague the final
publicised proposals for eco-towns – new widening further. History shows that devel- four eco-town sites that have finally been
towns, or exemplar green developments, with opers do not always respond to increased land selected for further progress, and questions
a minimum of 5,000 homes. They must also be availability with increased housing delivery, continue to emerge about their likely eco-cre-
designed to meet the highest standards of sus- even under more favourable conditions. dentials in practice. There is little doubt that,
tainability, including low- and zero-carbon To compound the issue further, alongside in transport terms, it will be the detailed
technologies and good public transport. the growth targets there has been a noticeable implementation, monitoring and
24 October 2009 ❘ Sustainable Business
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