MD2258 Mayor’s Transport Strategy – Local Implementation Plan guidance

1.1 The Mayor is required to prepare and publish a transport strategy (the Mayor’s Transport Strategy or MTS) which contains his policies for the promotion and encouragement of safe, integrated, efficient and economic transport facilities and services to, from and within Greater London; his proposals for discharging his duty of exercising his powers under Part IV of the Greater London Authority Act 1999 (‘the GLA Act’) for the purpose of securing the provision of those transport facilities and services; and his proposals for providing accessible transport. As soon as reasonably practicable after the publication of the MTS, each London borough council is required to prepare a Local Implementation Plan (‘LIP’) which sets out their proposals for implementing the MTS in their area. The Mayor may issue guidance about the implementation of the transport strategy to the boroughs.

1.2 On 15 March 2017 the Mayor formally directed TfL (MD2081) to prepare a revised MTS and guidance to the boroughs and the City of London as to the implementation of the revised strategy (‘LIP Guidance’). TfL was also directed to carry out related tasks, including undertaking the required consultation.

1.3 The LIP Guidance is designed to help boroughs prepare LIPs that will set out how local transport improvements will be delivered to contribute to achieving the Mayor’s Transport Strategy vision and priorities. The Guidance recognises the important role of the boroughs in improving local communities and the lives of local residents and the contribution the boroughs make to achieve these priorities.

Consultation

1.4 On 21 June 2017 the Mayor published his draft MTS and draft LIP guidance for consultation. While there is no statutory requirement to consult on the LIP guidance, the draft LIP guidance was consulted on in parallel to the MTS. The consultation ran for 14.5 weeks, closing on 2 October 2017. The consultation period was extended from the usual 12 week period to account for the summer holidays. This consultation was directed at relevant stakeholders, namely: the boroughs, London Councils, London Travel Watch, London Government Technical Advisory Group and the London Environmental Directors’ Network.

1.5 Eighteen boroughs responded on LIP related matters. Nine submitted responses to the draft LIP consultation - LB Bexley, LB Brent, LB Camden, LB Croydon, LB Ealing, LB Enfield, LB Wandsworth, RB Greenwich, RB Kensington and Chelsea. Nine included a reference in their response to the MTS - City of London, LB Islington, LB Lambeth, RB Richmond-upon-Thames, LB Redbridge, LB Southwark, LB Sutton, LB Waltham Forest and Westminster City Council. Three responses were received from other organisations - London Cycling Campaign, London Councils and Sustrans.

1.6 The level of detail provided in a number of the responses was high which was very useful in developing the final version of the guidance. Some boroughs welcomed the acknowledgement in the Deputy Mayor’s Foreword that only boroughs can decide how the Mayor’s vision can be best achieved on the ground. There was also support for the aspiration that the LIPs should be shorter. London Councils commented that they continue to welcome the ability of boroughs to set their own locally specific targets, welcomed the recognition from the Deputy Mayor that some boroughs will wish to pursue more innovative measures whilst others will not and strongly welcomed the Deputy Mayor’s commitment to share data with boroughs to enable better decision-making.

1.7 The primary and recurrent theme of responses to the consultation was the perceived unnecessary prescriptiveness of the draft LIP Guidance. This has been a common response in previous LIP Guidance consultations and an issue which has been addressed in the proposed final version. The issues raised in the consultation, broadly grouped by theme and responses to them, are set out below.

Revision of the draft guidance

1.8 The Deputy Mayor for Transport gave a commitment to London Councils Transport and Environment Committee that the further revision of the guidance, in light of the responses and issues raised, would be undertaken in partnership with London Councils and the boroughs. A working group, chaired by London Councils and consisting of TfL officers and borough officers drawn from around London, was formed (‘The LIP3 working group’). The Deputy Mayor also gave an undertaking that the draft guidance would be significantly revised to make it less prescriptive, less complicated and more concise.

1.9 The LIP3 working group met five times, in three-hour sessions, to discuss the draft. In addition, a draft was circulated to borough officers on 20 December for comment and further meetings were held with London Councils to review the document in detail. The working relationship has been collaborative and the revised guidance has benefited from this thorough review.

1.10 In headline terms, when comparing the revised guidance with the draft guidance:

• the number of requirements that the boroughs must fulfil in producing a LIP has been reduced from 90 to 30;

• the length of the core part of the guidance has been reduced from 60 to 40 pages and

• the number of delivery indicators to be collected by the boroughs has been reduced from 28 to 14.

1.11 The preparation of the revised guidance has taken into account the comments received from stakeholders. In addition, consistency between other emerging strategies and plans has been checked and, where appropriate, amendments made.

2.1 The MTS replaces the 2010 MTS and will cover the period up to 2041, or until such time as the Mayor decides to revise the strategy. The LIP guidance will also cover the same period. The transport strategy forms the basis for the Corporation of London and London boroughs’ LIPs, which must contain transport proposals that are consistent with the transport strategy and must seek to implement its policies and proposals in their particular area.

3.1 Under section 149 of the Equality Act 2010 (‘the Equality Act’), as public authorities, the Mayor and TfL must have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation, and to advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not. Protected characteristics under the Equality Act are age, disability, gender re-assignment, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, and marriage or civil partnership status (the duty in respect of this last characteristic is to eliminate unlawful discrimination only). Further, s 33(1) of the GLA Act requires the Mayor to make appropriate arrangements with a view to securing that in the formulation of the policies and proposals to be included in any of his statutory strategies, and in their implementation, there is “due regard to the principle that there should be equality of opportunity for all people”.

3.2 The Mayor has an express duty to consult the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee and such other persons or bodies which represent the interests of persons with mobility problems as the Mayor considers appropriate when revising the MTS.

3.3 The LIP guidance will be assisting delivery of the policies and proposals of the MTS at a local level. An Equalities Impact Assessment in respect of the draft MTS was undertaken as part of the Integrated Impact Assessment (IIA), and also reported in the IIA Post-Adoption Statement which sets out how consultation responses, which raised concerns relevant to disabled passengers, have been addressed in the MTS. In preparing their draft LIP each borough is likely to undertake an Equalities Impact Assessment to demonstrate that the public sector equality duty has been discharged. In addition, each borough has a duty to consult with organisations representing disabled people.

a) Key risks and issues

4.1 GLA officers consider that TfL has adopted sound project management techniques meeting its obligations under the Mayor’s delegation and that risk has been appropriately mitigated throughout the process of the development of the revision of the strategy.

b) Consistency with other Mayoral strategies and priorities

4.2 Section 41 of the GLA Act provides that in revising the strategies, the Mayor shall have regard to the need for each of the Mayoral strategies to be consistent with each other. Section 41 also requires the Mayor to have regard to the need to ensure that the transport strategy is consistent with national policies and with such international obligations as the Secretary of State notifies to the Mayor.

4.3 TfL has developed working arrangements to ensure that statutory obligation and good practice are met in relation to integration and consistency between the Mayor’s statutory strategies, most notably with the London Plan, the London Environment Strategy and the Economic Development Strategy. At the date of the publication of the MTS, the other statutory strategies are yet to be adopted. While regard has been had to the issue of consistency with the Mayor’s strategies at present in force, these strategies do not address current circumstances, in particular, the up-to-date forecasts of population and employment growth. Accordingly, consistency in the transport strategy has been sought with the current drafts of the emerging revised strategies and not with the, soon to be superseded, statutory strategies currently in force. Consequently, the draft MTS was prepared with engagement with other strategy teams within the GLA.

Impact assessment and consultation

4.4 The consultation undertaken is explained above.

5.1 There are no direct financial implications for the GLA related to this report. The Cost of pre-publication and post-publication of the LIP will be funded by TfL.

5.2 TfL’s business planning process is aligned with the transport strategy. However, the transport strategy looks beyond the business planning period and funding this far ahead is necessarily attended by a degree of uncertainty. The Mayor is required to have regard to the resources available for implementation of the MTS when revising it, which will be done via the annual GLA Group budget setting process with TfL.

6.1 Section 144(2) of the GLA Act allows the Mayor to issue guidance as to the implementation of the MTS to any London borough council, the Common Council of the City of London and anyone else who exercises statutory functions in relation to Greater London or any part of it. Those bodies are required to have regard to the guidance in exercising any function. The guidance typically has as its focus the preparation of the LIPs by the boroughs and the City of London.

6.2 The functions relevant to the preparation of the LIP guidance were delegated to TfL pursuant to section 38 of the GLA Act by MD2081. Approval of the final version of the LIP guidance for publication is reserved to the Mayor.

6.3 The requirements for a LIP are set out in section 145. In addition to containing the borough’s proposals for the implementation of the MTS in its area, the LIP shall include a timetable for implementing the different proposals in the plan and the date by which all proposals will be implemented. When approving a LIP, the Mayor must ensure that it is consistent with the MTS, that the proposals that it contains are adequate and that the timetable for implementation and the deadline by which the proposals are to be implemented is adequate. The LIP Guidance has been drafted so as to assist the boroughs with complying with the statutory requirements and the criteria against which the Mayor is required to assess a LIP. If LIPs are produced which do not meet the statutory requirements, the Mayor may use his powers of direction in ss 147 and 150 and may even step in and produce the LIP himself although the purpose of the LIP Guidance is to avoid such scenarios.

7.1 The LIPs guidance will be published in late March. A series of group workshops and bi-lateral meetings will be arranged in March and April with borough officers to explain the guidance. This will be followed up and supported by seminars on specialist topics such as the Healthy Streets Approach.

Appendix A: Revised Guidance for Borough Officers on Developing the Third Local Implementation Plan

http://content.tfl.gov.uk/third-lips-guidance-march-2018.pdf