Funding still not secured for Active Neighbourhood as TfGM contradict MCC’s claims about who watered down the Active Neighbourhood Plans.
On the 28th February S4PLB received a reply from Dame Sarah Storey (DSS) in regards to the follow-up letter we sent to her office in January.
You can read her reply in full along with a detailed response to our questions from TfGM here.
Our original open letter from October is here.
S4PLB’s Response to DSS latest letter:
We thank DSS for her reply and using her position as Active Travel Commissioner to remind stakeholders the importance of assessing schemes in their entirety. This is essential to ensure funds are not spent on individual interventions while genuine schemes are progressively watered down.
From DSS’s reply we are reassured to hear that:
- DSS has asked for all schemes to be assessed in their entirety to preserve their integrity. This is fundamental to achieve modal shift in the way people travel.
- A decision has yet to be made if this scheme will be funded. We take this as a sign that TfGM are refusing to be pressured by MCC Highway’s decision to proceed at risk.
- TfGM are holding MCC Highways to account and requesting that they provide the Strategic Case for the Levenshulme & Burnage Active Neighbourhood before any funds are released.
Despite these reassurances however, further details in the correspondence raise yet more concerns about how MCC Highways have managed the project to date and the lack of willingness in the Highways department to deliver schemes that genuinely reallocate space to people on foot and people on bicycles, in accordance with MCC’s own policies and plans.
S4PLB biggest concern is around the open contradiction between TfGM and Ian Halton of MCC Highways over the final number of traffic filters in the scheme and which organisation objected to further filters being included in the scheme.
As previously reported by S4PLB, during a meeting with MCC with Cllr Tracey Rawlins and Ian Halton (Head of Design, Commissioning & PMO Highways Service) present, our members were told that MCC Highways had reached an agreement with TfGM to limit the scope of the project and it was TfGM who had intervened to reduce the number of filters in the scheme.
However in the detailed response to DSS at her request, TfGM said the following:
“TfGM has not advised that fewer modal filters should be included in the scheme as suggested in section 1 of the correspondence. In some instances, TfGM encouraged that further modal filters be considered.”
TfGM go on to explain further that despite repeated requests MCC Highways have not yet submitted the ‘Strategic Case’ for the infrastructure they are building. The Strategic Case is an overview of the scheme and must evidence how overall the scheme addresses the objectives of an Active Neighbourhood.
MCC Highways have been made aware that the scheme must evidence how it addresses the Active Neighbourhood objectives overall and TfGM have offered much support on this.
“Our (TfGM’s) District team engage in regular dialogue; verbally face to face and via email. These issues have been repeatedly requested, discussed, queried and positive change suggestions have been posited by the TfGM team for several years.”
So the situation at present is that MCC Highways have designed a range of individual interventions for active travel that on their own have been approved by the Design Review Panel (DRP). However despite TfGM repeatedly requesting MCC Highways submit a Strategic Case for the whole scheme, as yet nothing has been provided.
As the most recent plans show, MCC Highways are relying on a large number of speed tables and chicanes to slow traffic through the area. S4PLB have continually reminded them that speed calming measures like this are expensive and ineffective at reducing through traffic, which is a key goal of an Active Neighbourhood. The additional filters suggested by ourselves, and now we can confirm also by TfGM, are a significantly cheaper intervention that would be far more effective when making the Strategic Case and securing funding for the scheme.
If these plans are final and are presented in the final business case for the scheme, S4PLB are calling on the funding authorities not to approve this scheme. To do so would undermine many other future projects and grant a licence for local authorities to deliver Active Neighbourhood schemes that are not capable of achieving real change in how people move around their local area, leaving cars being the preferred option for short journeys.
S4PLB reiterate our call to all stakeholders in this scheme that only the highest quality infrastructure is provided and is done so in a way that provides new active travel routes that enable people to make meaningful journeys around our neighbourhood. This cannot be achieved by speed calming measures and continuing to prioritise residential roads for through traffic in contradiction of the city’s Streets for All policy.
Streets for People - Levenshulme and Burnage 