Connect with Tim PharoahConnect with Tim Pharoah

PPG13 - A Guide to Better Practice. Reducing the need to travel through planning

The research was a collaborative effort to produce guidance on how local planning and transport authorities can reduce the need to travel through planning decisions. It had the particular merit of being endorsed jointly by the (then) Departments of the Environment, and of Transport. It was thus part of the laudable efforts of the Conservative government of the time to secure an integrated approach to transport and land use planning.

However, the Government ordered an "external review" of planning practice guidance, and the resulting report by Lord Taylor" says that it is "Out-of-date, as PPG13 has been replaced by the NPPF. No need for Government to provide this type of best practice advice. Can be cancelled."
(External Review of Government Planning Practice Guidance, DCLC, December 2012)

Given the sporadic and doubtful progress towards reducing the need to travel through land use planning measures, one is left to conclude that this policy is no longer seen as relevant or important. As has been made clear in many Government-sponsored reports, attempts by local authorities to limit car-based development and travel in their areas without a wider supporting policy framework is unworkable. Developers will simply seek to play one authority off against another.

The document is not available online (it was produced in the pre-digital age).


Date(s)1994
Client(s)Department of the Environment
Team(s)Tim Pharoah with JMP Consultants, Llewellyn Davies, David Banister (UCL)

keywords

Reducing the need to travel, traffic reduction, land use planning, sustainable transport, best practice