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Road adoption: Design Standards & Benchmarking. Nick Gough Area Highway Development Control Manager - SW Hertfordshire. Summary. Design Standards Who, what and why National standards Local standards Benchmarking Relevance to road adoption National Regional Within Hertfordshire.
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Road adoption:Design Standards & Benchmarking Nick Gough Area Highway Development Control Manager - SW Hertfordshire
Summary Design Standards • Who, what and why • National standards • Local standards Benchmarking • Relevance to road adoption • National • Regional • Within Hertfordshire
Design Standards 1 Who, what and why • National standards • Design Manual for Roads and Bridges • Design Bulletin 32 (1977) superseded by Manual for Streets (2007) • Reflects changes planning policy • Solutions tailored to circumstances rather than worst case standard • Encourages local distinctiveness and use of innovative techniques like SUstainable Drainage Systems or SUDs
Design Standards 2 • Local standards • Available on-line at http://www.hertsdirect.org • Roads in Hertfordshire 2nd edition being reviewed • Incorporate changes in national context as well as local initiatives like the Transport Asset Management Plan and emerging Local Transport Plan 3 • Incorporate clarified approach to adoption agreed at Highway & Transport Panel in November 2009 • 3rd edition will be web-based and more easily updatable • Standards give certainty and minimise risk - for all parties • For the Highway Authority this means only adopting roads we would be willing to maintain
Benchmarking • Relevance to road adoption - meeting with Welwyn Hatfield and Hertsmere in late 2007. • Particular concerns about large multi-phase/ developer sites like British Aerospace, Hatfield • National level comparisons • Regional • Within Hertfordshire
National scene • Web search results: • Shires who refer to the APC on their website = 9 out of 27 • Derbyshire, Devon, Essex, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Kent, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire and Suffolk • West Sussex considering its stance on the APC • Unitaries who refer to the APC = 14 out of 57 • Barnsley, Basingstoke & Dean, Bury, Cornwall, Coventry, Derby, Halton, Kirklees, Pembrokeshire, Plymouth, Swansea, Swindon, Vale of Glamorgan and Wokingham • District who refers to the APC: South Somerset
Regional approach to adoption 1 General development topics • Development Management Forum every 6 months • Next full meeting at HCC on 10 May • Eastern region benchmarking group to meet on 5 March • Responses from 9 authorities in February 2008 • Criteria: charging for pre-application advice, S38 and S 278 procedures, commuted sums, S 106 and Community Infrastructure Levy • Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, HCC, Norfolk, Peterborough, Southend, Suffolk and Thurrock
Regional approach to adoption 2 Team structure and the Advanced Payment Code • Responses from 15 authorities from Southern and Eastern Forums in October 2008 • These 6 apply the Code: Essex, Oxfordshire, Slough (unitary), Suffolk, West Berkshire (unitary) and Wokingham (unitary) • These 10 do not apply the Code: Bedfordshire (pre-split), Brighton & Hove (unitary), Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire (tomorrow), East Sussex, Hertfordshire, Isle of Wight (unitary), Luton (unitary), Peterborough (unitary), and Reading (unitary) • 10 + 6 # 15
Regional approach to adoption 3 Reasons for not using the APC • ‘…staff time and cost involved to do it properly have always been the deciding factor’ • ‘Often it didn't really achieve what we wanted it to achieve and left us with additional work to do’ • ‘…it can restrict flexibility’
