The jurys out on local transport bodies, says localist think-tank
Author: TransportXtra |
GOVERNANCE
Local Transport bodies could struggle to carve out a role for themselves, a think-tank warned this week.
The comments come in a new report by Localis, written by Daniel Crowe and Steven Howell, with a foreword by Peter Box, chairman of the Local Government Association’s economy and transport board.
“There is the significant potential for further confusion and a lack of joined-up thinking if local transport bodies become major players in determining local infrastructure but fail to join up with other policy areas such as planning, housing and health,” say Crowe and Howell.
“It remains to be seen how successfully LTBs will link with other local institutions and whether they are the right platform for greater transport powers.
“LTBs could be a step in the right direction; on the other hand in practice they could lead to an increasingly diffuse local governance landscape.”
The authors criticise the “plethora” of different Government funding streams for transport. “With a dozen capital grant funding streams from the DfT alone, in addition to more general schemes to support and promote infrastructure such as the Growing Places Fund and Regional Growth Fund, and with responsibility split between local authorities and LEPs, local areas face an increasingly difficult task in order to navigate the various requirements, prepare strong bids and join up funding and timescales.”
They recommend the Government adopt Lord Heseltine’s recommendation of a single funding pot for economic development-related expenditure including transport. “At the very least, a single pot for transport would help to bring together the myriad of transport and infrastructure funding schemes already on offer,” they say.
But they oppose distributing funding entirely via competitive bids. “We would argue that developing such pots along competitive lines alone is unhelpful, particularly in regard to transport proposals, where a significant amount of time and resource is required to complete the necessary technical work, all of which is wasted should the bid fail.”
They suggest scrapping the Highways Agency. The strategic road network could be managed on localist lines with greater influence from councils, “potentially via Local Transport Boards”.