Agenda item

Report by Corporate Director of Environment & Place (PSC4)

At its last Meeting, the Committee requested to consider this report prior to its consideration by Cabinet at its meeting on 19 October 2021.

The Cabinet at its Meeting on the 19 October will:

·            Provide any comments on the proposed Local Transport and Connectivity Plan (LTCP) document and supporting strategies.

·            Endorse the content of the LTCP document, and the supporting strategies as the basis for public consultation, commencing in November 2021 for a period of 6 weeks, and

·            Delegate the decision on the final LTCP document, including graphical format to the Corporate Director for Environment and Place in consultation with the Cabinet Member for Highways Management and Cabinet Member for Travel and Development Strategy.

The Committee is RECOMMENDED to consider the Cabinet report attached with its associated Annexes.

At its last Meeting, the Committee had requested to consider the Local Transport and Connectivity Plan report prior to its consideration by Cabinet at its meeting on 19 October 2021.

John Disley, Infrastructure Strategy & Policy Manager in introducing the report, explained that the report provided an update on the Local Transport and Connectivity Plan, and specifically, it outlined the context and key points included in the draft LTCP Document, on which it was proposed to undertake public consultation. It also included context about the supporting data (Annex 2), draft Freight and Logistics Strategy (Annex 3), draft Innovation Framework (Annex 4), draft Active and Healthy Travel Strategy (Annex 5), Bus Service Improvement Plan and the Integrated Sustainability Appraisal (Annex 6). It was proposed that the documents were all endorsed for public consultation commencing in November 2021.

Members made the following points during discussion:

·            Members felt that there should be more detail regarding of how/where freight consolidation would work.

·            Members queried the scale and ambition of the targets and whether thinking had been done around cause and effect.

·            The Committee indicated that it would like to see how officers were going to consult on such a large range of policies, what questions were going to be asked, what percentage of residents they hoped to reach whether any work had been carried out around reaching the right people.  A suggestion was made that officers could use representative sampling for public consultation and use of Citizens Panels.

·            Members would like to see more detail on how targets would be monitored and whether targets might need to be revised in the context of COP26.

·            Members requested that Scrutiny be added to timeline for future engagement.  Officers agreed for this to be done.

·            Members queried how scrutiny could feed into Oxford Transport Strategy.

·            Members queried how LTCP and OP2050 fit together, and which took precedent.

·            Members queried how officers would take account of policy to deliver the targets through planning applications.

·            Members queried why the KPI’s did not include car ownership, car club miles, share of different transport modes or carbon budgeting. Officers gave an undertaking to adding.

Following discussion, the Committee agreed to forward the following points to Cabinet for consideration:

·            The Committee felt that there should be further detail in the plan in relation to freight.

·            The Committee felt that the policies outlined should have an evidence base which linked cause and effect of how each policy was predicted to cause car-use reduction in line with the targets. The Committee also wished to see assurance in the document regarding monitoring progress against the targets.

·            The Committee expressed concern about how the public were going to be consulted; how the Cabinet were going to consult with the right people; whether a target had been set for how many residents they hoped to reach; whether that target had been benchmarked and what questions were going to be asked to cover such a wide range of policies.  The Committee requested to see the consultation document prior to it being sent out to the public.

·            The Committee requested that opportunities for Scrutiny input be added to the timeline document.

·            The Committee requested that officers come back to the Committee with opportunities to engage in the Oxford Strategy Policy Development (acceleration of LCTP2).

·            In relation to the Indicators the Committee wished to see indicators around Car Ownership, Shared Transport, Car Sharing and Car-Pools.

·            The Committee wished to see greater clarification around the Budget.