Does anyone have any experience of the level of transport evidence which Highway Authorities and Examiners are looking for to underpin a neighbourhood plan?
I'm looking at an early draft of a neighbourhood plan for a market town, which is bringing forward a decent amount of housing. It's not inconsistent with the LPA's Core Strategy, but the Core Strategy has only distributed an amount of housing to the market towns collectively. Therefore there is no previous plan-level transport assessment work carried out.
The amount of growth leads my transport colleagues to say that they would like an assessment of cumulative impacts carried out before they are happy to say that the plan is acceptable. My concern is the financial burden that this puts on the Town Council.
So is anyone aware of any examples of neighbourhood plans which have allocated land for development sufficient that there are significant cumulative transport impacts, in advance of any assessment being carried out for LPA site specific policies? Is our requirement for assessment unreasonable when its a neighbourhood plan?
Thanks
