From the Guardian


Lisa and I were at a meeting last night ... and from a speaker there, we understand that there is now a requirement on developers and others putting plans forward to liaise and agree (where possible?) with neighbouring plans in order to avoid or at least reduce conflicts and barriers between neighbouring developments.  I also understand from other sources that powers are removed / reduced for local councillors wanting to "call in" contentious plans in their areas to planning commitees. 

For major projects and for regional planning, the changes to the NPPF (this is not the first) and other planning laws and regulations are a significant nuisance and added cost.  Witness the Wiltshire Local Plan which looked good ... but by the time it came to the inspectors was so out of date as to not be acceptable; a decade of work "thrown away", a gap left in local guidance, and a reduction (but not an extinguishing) of the Neighbourhood Plan.

There seems to be contradiction in the government lines here ... on one hand, it's all about devolving things to the regions, but on the other hand the regions are having their authority to decide their own direction overruled by central government.


A West Country scene to be changed by central government?

And some others ...

 
The two line station picture (number 2) - Melksham in 2030?

 
All very well having a station within easy walking distance, but without other local amenities it will tend to be nothing but a dormitory, with residents catching the train to work if it goes the right way and driving everywhere else.  The main complaint from existing residents - after the loss of countryside - is often that such developments will overload local schools, doctors, sewage processing etc without any compulsion for the developer to include these things.

 
Yep - no warning, NPPF was changed on Monday.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/full-steam-ahead-to-fast-track-more-homes-near-stations

 

Please don't encourage him.     

 
How many stations are there that are:
a) outside settlements or in green belt AND
b) served by at least 4 trains per hour?

Would the policies listed in NPPF apply just to areas around existing stations or could a developer pay for a new one in order to make use of the NPPF rules? (though the new station would itself be subject to planning...)

 

I have not (yet?) read the new NPPF - is the 4 trains an hour specified?   Each way or a 30 minute service? Possible by stopping trains that already go through but don't stop?   Looking at the line from London to Penzance, I would look at ... Kintbury, Bedwyn, Castle Cary, Tiverton Parkway, Menheniot, Bodmin Parkway, Lostwithiel, Par and St Erth as stations that may fit the criteria.    Others across the GWR area which have at least 4 trains an hour passing through and  that come to my mind are Avoncliff, Freshford, Newton St Cryes, Pilning, Dean and Mottisfont.

 

The NPPF refers to "well-connected stations" for which the following definition is provided:


I'm struggling with the last part; the criteria would be met of there were two trains toward the workplace hub, but none back? Or was it put in to refer to loop lines (like in Liverpool) where you only need trains in one direction around the loop?

 
Two tph in the peak direction?....

 

I've been reading into this a bit more - a blog from Lichfields - in particular, travel-to-work areas, distances from stations, and services there.

The top 60 travel to work areas in England have been expanded to 80 and notable additions in the South West are Trowbridge, Newbury, Poole and Cheltentham.  Most of the South East and Central Southern England is included, but further South West only the south of Devon through to Plymouth makes the grade.  Notably, Bath and Salisbury are not included.  Station service wise, the specification is two trains per hour acheievable in the peak direction, and we are looking as I read it as development totally within 800 metres of the station.

Where does that leave us in our region?  If there are sites near existing town stations such as Trowbridge, there's an assumption to favour development, as there is near Dilton Marsh and Avoncliff, both of which have multiple peak hour trains that could call.  Freshford is in the Bath travel to work area which is not a top one, and I question for Melksham as to whether 2 trains per hour can be achieved in "peak" direction - towards the named town in the area, perhaps, with a gap from 06:29 to 09:09 and nothing running through that could have a stop added.   We do have 2 trains in the hour to Chippenham and Swindon - 07:21 and 08:02 and I wonder if they meet the criterion even though going out of area?

Looking wider in the Bristol region, Pilning seems to be an obvious choice with 4 (and soon to be 5?) trains per hour passig through with 2 each to Parkway and to Temple Meads which could have a stop added easily enough, and a lot of presently-green fields close to the station.  The NPPF talks about travel TO work area and from comments I have seen nothing about travel FROM work, so it would appear that for people going home to Pilning, a bus from Severn Beach or doubling back at Severn Tunnel Junction would allow the presumtion to allow development to be met. 

Futher afield still, stations I identified earlier at Menheniot, St Erth and Bedwyn are outside designated travel to work areas, but  Mottisfont and Kintbury are in.  Don't know about Dean - the trains stop in a top TTWA but the passenger exit is outside it.

 

Do you mean "in the direction to which most people would be travelling" ?

The frequency of services, be it 2 or 4, had to be maintained "throughout the daytime"; whatever that means (longer in the summer?).

 
Yes;....so would apply if the service swapped direction midway through the day to maintain peak flow of 2tph....

 

That's the old fashioned way of doing it?   I remember from my commutes to school seeing a succession of trains in the morning peak coming up from Ashford and Hastings through Sevenoaks and Orpington headed for Cannon Street and Charing Cross.  During the day, the  overnight-empty shed at Grove Park and the sidings on Blackfriars Bridge were populated with 12 carriage trains, which in the evening headed out of town again having filled up with the same people they brought in that morning at one of the two termini.   During the day, services to / from Hastings were just hourly, just (!) 6 carriages, and all stations too once they got out beyond Tonbridge.

 

There is no mention of the word "peak" in the Lichfields report (nor in NPPF).

But, it was your reference to Trowbridge, Bath and Salisbury that was the eye-opener. My first thought (well, almost...) was:

"what were the designers of the station criteria trying to achieve?"

Firstly, the NPPF section we're concerned with here is covering developments outside settlements.
Exactly how settlement boundaries are calculated is a bit arcane, but I'm assuming that NPPF is relying on existing methods that do tend to produce something that appears intuitively right.

It's the development that has to outside the settlement, not the station. So, we could be looking at (for example) Castle Cary, where the station in in the fields, or we could be considering any station in a village or small town where an 800 metre walk could get you from the development to the station. Even a larger town, where the station is off-centre (Melksham?).

We've already discussed the service frequency. Whatever the detail, it's sensible for the policy to only permit development where the station is somewhat useful.

Now, why top 80 Travel-to-Work areas for GVA?

First thing to understand is where the TTW area concept comes from. According to Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travel_to_work_area:

I have no idea how the two criteria are manipulated in such a way that nowhere is left out of a TTW, but the resulting map can be seen at https://geoportal.statistics.gov.uk/documents/534c0129bdc14be5aa270a919668a3d4/explore

It mostly looks sort-of-realistic, although the Merthyr Tydfil TTW area, for example, looks unnatural (for want of a better term).

The TTWs represent areas with a high degree of self-containment; people both work and live in the same TTW.
However, there is a huge difference in the working population contained within these TTWs, which naturally affects the GVA obtained in each.
There's also a variation in the per-capita GVA: somehow, Swindon TTWA beats London into 2nd place and Salisbury, Trowbridge, Bath and Taunton come in that (decreasing GVA/cap) order in the 2023 data  

While the productivity (GVA/cap) is notable, I think the population variation between TTWAs is more significant. It appears that Bath TTWA has about three-quarters of the working population of Trowbridge TTWA.

What does this mean for the chances of station-related development? To be in the top 80 GVA list, your TTWA could be:
* an area of high population density
* an area that is not surrounded by competing work locations that eat into the size of the TTWA (and hence population and GVA - bye bye Bath)
* an area that is not so rural that the TTWA population is below (say) 100k (that's Taunton out...)

The TTWA criterion gives some odd results: Poole TTWA is OK for station-related development but Weston-S-M is not.

Thus, in summary, our hypothetical developer is looking for:
* A station in the fields or near the edge of an existing town;
* ... that has a frequent service to somewhere-or-other
* ... in an area that already has a high population and is not surrounded by other workplace destinations (so where are the trains going?).

"what were the designers of the station criteria trying to achieve?"

I still don't know.