UK
Transport planning is a big debate in every country, with yearly investments in transportation infrastructure accounting for around 2.5% to 5% of global government spending. It’s an opportunity to grow the economy, promote sustainable development, and set a vision for creating happy, healthy communities.
On this page, we’ll take a deep dive into how transport policy planning works in the UK — at both the central and local government levels — and show you how public bodies run transport planning consultations that are engaging and enjoyable!
Transport Planning on a Central Government Level
All transport consultations require liaising with stakeholders. These are typically landowners, community residents, individuals and transport planners.
The UK’s most important rural and urban transportation planning — like motorways, airports and the rail network — are managed by central government, albeit indirectly.
When it comes to day-to-day work, arms-length bodies like National Highways or Network Rail are tasked with maintaining and upgrading their respective sections of the public realm.
Funding comes from government-allocated budgets, as well as user charges (think rail fares or vehicle excise duty) and some private finance initiatives.
It’s a similar story in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, with the devolved legislatures having significant power to direct more or less funding to transport schemes as they see fit.
For example, the Welsh government recently invested £800m into upgrading their train stock, which now make up two-thirds of rail passenger journeys in Wales.
Transport infrastructure planning at the central government level typically goes through NSIP planning (Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects). Although some exceptional projects, for example HS2, have passed through Parliament as a Hybrid Bill, allowing for even greater scrutiny.
In practice, NSIPs bypass the local planning authorities, with planning consent instead being granted by the Secretary of State for Transport — following the recommendations of the Planning Inspectorate. It’s a relatively top-down approach and it’s supposed to get things done quicker, although there are still many opportunities for government to engage with local authorities and residents.
Central Government Transport Consultation: A417 Road Upgrade Scheme
A417 Road Scheme’s Wildlife Bridge: Image Source
The 1417 is one of the busiest major roads in Gloucestershire, with heavy congestion in peak hours and poor visibility, making it a notorious accident blackspot.
However, the transport planning process was far from simple, with several key concerns raised by experts and locals alike:
- Local heritage: The road upgrade involved demolishing a historic pub, the Air Balloon, which was built in 1784.
- Land acquisition and accessibility: Plans envisioned a slightly different route, necessitating Compulsory Purchase Orders and reworked Public Rights of Way and private access roads.
- Environmental impact: The site is located entirely within the Cotswold National Landscape. Here, the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) attaches “great weight” to conserving and enhancing the scenic beauty, with development only permitted in exceptional circumstances for the public interest.
As such, National Highways had to not only present a strong case to the Planning Inspectorate, but they also needed to bring local planning authorities, landowners, and road users on board through effective transportation planning.
Gloucestershire’s Transport Consultation
To get shovels in the ground, National Highways launched a huge consensus-building effort, involving in-person events and three rounds of digital consultation, with interactive mapping, hosted on Citizen Space. This gave the project democratic answerability and also highlighted several improvements to sustainable public transportation.
- A 37-metre-wide wildlife bridge to carry the Cotswold Way footpath, opening a route for cyclists/horse-riders, and providing a nature corridor for local fauna. This will be the largest bridge of its kind in the UK.
- New roads and footpaths to ensure residents, businesses and their customers have easy access to the adjoining road scheme. One will be called the Air Balloon way to preserve some of the local heritage.
- Detailed records of the Air Balloon pub made prior to its demolition, so it may be accurately built on another site one day.
Transport Planning on a Local Government Level
Sub-National Transport Bodies in England: Image Source
National bodies might spearhead much of the major transport developments in the UK, but a huge swathe of transport planning also takes place at the regional and local levels.
For starters, England is split into eight transport regions, which each have sub-national bodies and broad strategies for how transport priorities should be delivered.
At the local level, the UK is covered by dozens of Local Transport Authorities (LTAs). These usually represent a County Council or Combined Authority area. They’re the ones who manage the minor roads and public transport in the county, as well as things like walking, cycling, and freight routes.
The main role of LTAs is to create Local Transport Plans (LTPs) that outline the existing transport context, achievable objectives for five-year periods, and suggestions for funding bids to be delivered to the Department for Transport.
As a rule of thumb, all Local Planning Authorities must give material consideration to LTPs when creating their own Local Plans, and when considering individual planning applications.
Example: West Northamptonshire Local Transport Plan
West Northamptonshire Local Transport Plan: Image Source
In West Northamptonshire Council, a new 20-year Local Transport Plan was recently approved by councillors. It sets a vision for enhancing all transport modes — including upgrades to active travel infrastructure, a Mass Rapid Transport scheme to link major towns, and improvements to railway stations.
Each proposal is ranked by cost and deliverability, with a rough timescale of proposed actions for the short, medium, and long term.
When it came to collecting public feedback, West Northamptonshire Council used a mixture of in-person and online events. Residents could attend four public workshops in town centres and two virtual drop-in meetings on MS Teams.
These events were widely publicised on the dedicated Citizen Space page and council social media feeds, along with quick explainers of what the plans meant and links to important documents, attracting 250 attendees. The online survey itself gathered almost 500 responses.
The consultation showed strong public support for the plan’s vision, objectives, and policies. Following the ‘We asked, You said, We did’ format, West Northamptonshire published a full consultation report and table of amendments based on public feedback. The final plan was shortly updated and changes went live on the same page for all to see.
Changes to the final version, following public consultation, included:
- More dropped kerbs around doctor’s surgeries and chemists, so wheelchair and bicycle users can move around without obstruction.
- Prioritising regular and weekend bus services for rural communities.
- An aspiration for village bypass schemes, in particular for Farthinghoe and Cold Ashby, to be added in the next iteration of the plan in five years.
- Numerous rewordings of the plan to make it more concise, clear, and engaging.
Traffic Regulation Order (TROs) Consultations
Traffic Regulation Orders (TROs) are one of the most visible ways local government engages citizens in transport planning. TROs are legal instruments for when rules of the road need to be changed — whether that’s a permanent change of speed limits, a temporary street closure, or an experimental scheme such as an e-scooter trial.
More recently, the government has been encouraging councils to adopt Digital Traffic Regulation Orders (D-TROs). This means GPS systems in our phones and cars will be able to see if road rules have changed recently, making it easier for drivers to navigate without running into issues. In fact, D-TROs will become a legal requirement in 2025, with all traffic schemes to be digitised and uploaded to the Department for Transport’s central repository.
Top Tip: this is where transport planning software like Citizen Space comes in useful. Our integrated geospatial mapping feature lets you export D-TROs from a GIS map into GeoJSON format without the need for manual data re-entry.
How to Run a Transport Planning Consultation
Effective transport planning relies heavily on public input — both in a legal sense and as a code of best practice. In the UK, public consultations are governed by the Gunning Principles, which ensure fairness and transparency.
In practice, these rules really represent the bare minimum, and people’s expectations are changing as government activities move online and become more visible in digital spheres. These days, a good transport planning consultation requires a multi-layered engagement strategy.
1. Use In-Person Events
The traditional approach to public engagement involves in-person events like town hall meetings, workshops, and publication in newspapers/noticeboards. While times (and citizen engagement methods) have changed, a large section of the population still prefers to engage in this way. In particular, the elderly often prefer having physical materials and a friendly face to talk to, as they may not be as tech-savvy as younger generations.
When engaging in this way, it’s good practice to offer several events in different locations (e.g. both major towns and rural communities) and at different hours to account for people’s working patterns.
There should be no commitment for attendees to stick around for the whole thing, so make sure to offer leaflets with further details, for example with QR codes that link to the Citizen Space consultation page.
2. Use Interactive Surveys
The govtech platform used serves as the main hub for citizens to learn about and respond to the details of a Local Transport Plan or development scheme.
Consultation pages should inform citizens at the point of response. That means including both short summaries and full download links for the relevant scheme(s), with clearly stated deadlines and alternative options for people to get in touch.
If you’re using Citizen Space to run online engagement, these basics will all be familiar to you, as our templates explain exactly where to input this information.
Good survey design is crucial in encouraging well thought-out responses. You might want to consider offering ‘Likert Scale’ questions, where respondents rank their opinion of a particular policy from 1-10, as well as further Comment Boxes to elaborate on why they think that…
Overall, you’re looking to create a survey that checks all of these boxes:
- Accessible: Present information in multiple formats to cater to everyone. Offer alternative languages and ensure the survey is compatible with assistive technologies for users with disabilities. For more info, check out our page on Citizen Space’s accessibility standards.
- Interactive: Keep people engaged with interactive elements like maps, clickable images, and progress indicators. Breaking down complex information into digestible sections, aided by visuals, improves understanding and encourages completion.
- Beautiful: A well-designed survey reflects the hard work that went into your plans, so don’t overlook the importance of this step! Use clear fonts, consistent branding, and a logical flow to guide users from start-to-finish.
If you’d like a full explainer of how to create an online survey with Citizen Space, our Help page has you covered…
3. Use Geospatial Data
Crossrail 2 Interactive Map: Image Source
Transport planning relies on geospatial mapping and place-based engagement to a high degree – and for good reason! These are plans that cover roads, footpaths, and cycle lanes that link across long distances and impact entire communities. There’s so much to consider, like route options, access points, and locations for bus stops, train stations, the list goes on…
Geospatial mapping improves public engagement with transport consultations and is vastly helpful in showing a planned route in real terms. Using a digital engagement platform, geospatial mapping can include interactive features and links to station factsheets and individual consultation pages.
From a user’s perspective, geospatial maps are intuitive and easy to understand. There’s no memorising road names or location descriptions — just a clickable element with all the information at their fingertips.
And from a transport planner’s perspective, geospatial data is super useful when it comes to making sense of feedback and responding sensitively to individual comments. You can see exactly where people’s ‘pain points’ are on a planned development, and display your reworked version in a visually attractive and compelling format.
Conclusion
Transport planning is one of those topics that everyone has an opinion on — movement is so fundamental to our lifestyles and we all need the infrastructure and services to support it. There’s also no single correct answer, rather it’s the aggregate of a community’s views that determine the direction of travel policy.
In the UK, it’s an especially momentous time for transport planning. In the past year, central government has signed off on several big developments (like Heathrow’s expansion and the Lower Thames Crossing) and promised a rework of English transport devolution. Plus, the wheels are in motion on parliamentary bills to re-nationalise rail services and bring bus services under local control. At every step, citizens will have the opportunity to shape these plans — and it’s our mission to make this engagement as seamless as possible.
Around the world, public bodies of all sizes and scales use Citizen Space Geospatial for their transport planning consultations. It’s simple to set up and even easier for respondents to make sense of, encouraging high-quality geospatial feedback from the people who know their area best.
Citizen Space is the go-to platform for connecting governments, developers, and citizens. If you’d like to learn more about how our software streamlines public engagement and provides transport planners with enriched geospatial data, book a free demo and we’ll walk you through it.
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