Travel Plans

What is a Travel Plan?

A Travel Plan is a strategy for managing multimodal access to a site or development. They focus on maximising the potential for travel by sustainable modes of transport.

Planning Practice Guidance published by the UK Government stipulates that they are required for all developments which generate significant amounts of transport movements. Local Planning Authorities often set their own specific thresholds.

Travel Plans, along with Transport Statements and Transport Assessments, form a suite of documents which are used through the planning process to assess and mitigate the negative transport effects of development, in order to promote sustainable development.

What do Travel Plans do?

Research commissioned by the Department for Transport, which examined the effectiveness of the Travel Plans of 26 organisations (local and national government departments, hospitals, universities and private companies) drew a conclusion of an average 17.8% reduction in traffic.

Travel Plans can have a wider-reaching range of benefits too:

• Increases in walking and cycling, with associated health gains.
• Improved social inclusion.
• Better conditions for employees.
• Improved staff recruitment and retention.
• The opportunity to contribute to environmental management standards such as ISO 14001.
• Good PR for businesses.
• Financial savings.
• Increases in bus use and associated ticket revenue.
• Better estate management.
• Less noise, congestion and pollution, and better conditions for freight distribution associated with reductions in car use.
• Better security and less fear of crime from better car parking management.

Connect Consultants produces Travel Plans

We can produce Travel Plans during the preparation of a planning application, or they can be dealt with at a later stage to discharge a planning condition.

In cases where the end-user or users are not known, or where there will be multiple organisations within the development, we produce a Framework Travel Plan initially. The Framework Travel Plan sets out the framework and principles for subsequent individual Travel Plans once the development becomes occupied.

Travel Plans involve appointing a Travel Plan Coordinator whose role includes ongoing monitoring and travel surveys, reporting the results to the local council, promoting the Travel Plan measures and initiatives amongst the development’s occupiers, and responding appropriately to ensure the targets are met. This typically spans the first five years of a development’s operation or occupancy.

At Connect Consultants, we regularly produce bespoke Travel Plans for our clients’ developments, to help enhance their sustainability, and to ultimately achieve planning approval.

We also act as Travel Plan Coordinators on behalf of our clients, to help meet the obligations or conditions imposed as part of the planning approval.