From November 2020 to January 2021 Transport North East held a consultation on their draft transport plan for the North East up to 2035. This is the SPACE for Gosforth response.

We looked at the plan’s vision and objectives, and we looked at the schemes proposed. The vision talks about carbon reduction, health, reducing inequalities, safer streets and sustainable travel. The schemes include link roads, corridor improvements, capacity upgrades, addressing vehicle pinch points, dual carriageways and junction upgrades. These clearly don’t align.

We fully support the plan objectives, but the schemes need to be re-evaluated to select and expand those that support the objectives and reject those that do not.

Transport North East say they are working to “deliver game-changing transport schemes and initiatives.” and “to greatly improve the lives of everyone living or working in our region.” The current plan won’t do this, but we hope our and other’s feedback will be taken into account to produce a revised plan that will achieve the stated objectives.

Transport for the North East itself provides “strategy, planning and delivery services on behalf of the North East Joint Transport Committee (NEJTC)“, where the committee is made up of the region’s two Combined Authorities (North of Tyne Combined Authority covering Newcastle, North Tyneside and Northumberland, and the North East Combined Authority covering Durham, Gateshead, Sunderland and South Tyneside).

Update 13 March 2021: Transport North East have produced their final plan for approval by local authorities. You can see the final plan and a “You said – we did” document explaining what changes have been made here.

The letter below is our group’s response to the original consultation in January 2021.

Dear Transport North East,

Re: North East Transport Plan Consultation – January 2021

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the North East Transport Plan. It is extremely positive to see The North East Combined Authority and The North of Tyne Combined Authority working together on a single coherent plan for the region.

We welcome and acknowledge the need, as you say, to “deliver profound and lasting improvements that will shape the North East and its people for decades to come.” We are in the midst of a Climate Emergency, a health crisis made worse because of existing high levels of poor health in part caused by inactivity, and scandalously we have still have not met legally-binding targets for air quality that came into force in 2005.

Between 2010 and 2019, 511 people were killed and 6,450 people were seriously injured on the North East’s roads. These are not just statistics, they were mums, dads, children, friends and neighbours. Almost half of those killed or seriously injured on the region’s roads were under 35 years old. Change is needed, and it is needed quickly, by 2025 not by 2035.

“The truth about a region’s aspirations isn’t found in its vision. It’s found in its budget.”

We’ve looked at the plan’s vision and objectives, and we’ve looked at the schemes proposed. The vision talks about carbon reduction, health, reducing inequalities, safer streets and sustainable travel. The schemes include link roads, corridor improvements, capacity upgrades, addressing vehicle pinch points, dual carriageways and junction upgrades. These clearly don’t align.

Carbon reduction, improved health and more sustainable travel all point to less vehicle traffic in future, not more. Building for more traffic while at the same time forecasting less traffic is just throwing money away, and will lead to more emissions and poor health outcomes.

While we acknowledge many of the schemes included do support active travel and public transport, for a region of two million people they could be substantially more ambitious than proposed, and achieve benefits far more quickly if funds weren’t being diverted to expensive schemes to create unneeded additional vehicle capacity.

The vision should define the destination

The plan vision needs to establish and make tangible what the end goal is and start to build towards that, so people understand the destination rather than only seeing individual steps on the journey. This will support both community buy-in to the plan and provide better focus for the initiatives that make up the plan.

It is not hard to envisage what this would look like. As a minimum it would need to include:

• Accessible and inclusive local streets with pavements that are not cluttered or used for parking.
• A defined road network for essential vehicle journeys, with reduced capacity compared to now, as fewer journeys will need a vehicle in future when other better options become available.
• Local roads that are not part of that main-road network that can be used for walking, cycling, socializing and street play, but not for through traffic (low traffic neighbourhoods).
• Junctions designed to prevent high-speed collisions and speed limits set to ensure collisions do not lead to serious injury or death.
• A region-wide network of safe walking and cycling routes to connect homes to shops, schools, parks and other local destinations and which support inclusive cycling and allow children to travel independently.
• An efficient high-frequency bus network with good quality interchanges and integration with walking and cycling routes for longer multi-modal journeys.

These alone would substantially achieve all the plan objectives with money to spare. The question for Transport North East is how quickly it can move to achieve this vision, so that everyone who lives in the North East can start to see and feel the benefits.

Transport North East has work to do to demonstrate this is not a ‘business as usual’ transport plan.

Substantially the objectives in the plan do speak to the serious economic, climate, air quality, health and wellbeing issues that are today caused by road transport, and need to be addressed through changes to the transport system. Good intentions though are not enough to achieve good outcomes.

As we have said, many of the actual schemes proposed are very much business as usual.

We therefore want to challenge Transport North East to come up with a revised set of schemes, including those on the list above, that will demonstrably prove this is not a ‘business as usual’ plan.

To be genuinely transformational, and not just business as usual, the plan should very clearly:

• Enable the five of seven local authorities that have set a target to be carbon neutral by 2030 to achieve that by substantially decarbonizing the transport system by 2030.
• Achieve zero killed and seriously injured on the region’s roads by 2025. (This should be part of the safe, secure network objective, not hidden away on page 33.)
• Create safe networks of routes leading to a step-change increase in walking and cycling for local (< 5 mile) journeys throughout the region.
• Demonstrate that Transport North East and the constituent authorities can act with the necessary pace and urgency to make these happen, with substantial progress by 2025 or sooner.

There’s no such thing as a ‘two minutes late for work emergency’

There is a Climate Emergency. Poor air quality is the largest environmental risk to public health in the UK. Physical inactivity is responsible for one in six UK deaths.

Choosing how the budget is allocated is a moral and political choice. Transport North East can either deliver profound and lasting improvements by prioritising the budget to address transport poverty, health, climate, economy and environment, or it can build more link roads to make driving marginally more attractive for a few years for people who can afford it. Almost certainly it won’t be possible to do both.

Please choose wisely.

We enclose our response to the consultation questions below.

Yours faithfully,

SPACE for Gosforth

www.spaceforgosforth.com

SPACE for Gosforth North East Transport Plan Questionnaire Response

2. Are you responding as an individual or on behalf of an organisation?

We are responding on behalf of the SPACE for Gosforth group, based in Gosforth in Newcastle upon Tyne. SPACE for Gosforth is a residents’ group with the aim of promoting healthy, liveable, accessible and safe neighbourhoods where walking and cycling are safe, practical and attractive travel options for residents of all ages and abilities. We are residents of Gosforth, most of us with families and we walk, cycle, use public transport and drive. SPACE stands for Safe Pedestrian and Cycling Environment.

6. Do we support the Vision Statement: “Moving to a green, healthy, dynamic and thriving North East”

Yes, we support the Vision Statement.

This needs to be brought to life and explained properly so people understand where the plan is, or should be according to the objectives, leading us. For example:

• Accessible and inclusive local streets with pavements that are not cluttered or used for parking.
• A defined road network for essential vehicle journeys, with reduced capacity compared to now, as fewer journeys will need a vehicle in future when other better options become available.
• Local roads that are not part of that main-road network that can be used for walking, cycling, socializing and street play, but not for through traffic (low traffic neighbourhoods).
• Speed limits set to ensure collisions do not lead to serious injury or death, and junctions designed to prevent high-speed collisions.
• A region-wide network of safe walking and cycling routes to connect homes to shops, schools, parks and other local destinations and which support inclusive cycling and allow children to travel independently.
• An efficient high-frequency bus network with good quality interchanges and integration with walking and cycling routes for longer multi-modal journeys

How much do you agree with each of the following objectives?

What do you think are the barriers to achieving each of these objectives?

The following are common barriers and / or risks that are likely to apply to all the objectives. We suggest these are included in a NE Transport Risk log to be tracked along with appropriate mitigations.

Governance and Leadership Risks

• Lack of political leadership and/or lack of alignment between political leaders.
• Lack of urgency to achieve committed timescales e.g. carbon neutral by 2030.
• Focusing on, and getting bogged down in, small incremental changes at the expense of the more widespread changes needed to achieve the objectives.
• Delays due to schemes not being initiated until the overall plan is agreed.
• Lack of clear prioritisation between objectives e.g. air quality limits need by law to be met ‘in the shortest possible timescale’ and the target for five of seven authorities is to be carbon neutral is 2030.
• Poor quality governance that means schemes, especially those that increase vehicle capacity, are implemented even if they don’t meet the NETP objectives.
• Failure to account for the longer-term impact of Covid in reducing demand for transport.
• Weak planning policies that lead to the creation of new car-dependant suburbs with no local facilities.
• Not exploring alternative revenue raising options for traffic demand management such as a workplace parking levy.

Risks relating to the selection of schemes

• Insufficient portion of the overall budget allocated to meet specific objectives.
• Too much focus on ‘encouragement’ rather than making changes to make streets safer to enable people to walk or cycle.
• Inappropriate allocation of the budget to the wrong schemes that either will not support the objectives or prevent budget being allocated to more effective, more strategically aligned, cheaper or quicker to deliver schemes.
• Over-reliance on traffic management changes, which are unlikely to achieve the objectives and risk inducing increasing traffic volumes and adding to pollution and emissions.
• A lack of measures to manage and reduce the demand for private vehicle travel.
• Promotion of headline-grabbing ‘mega-schemes’ that sound impressive but are less effective than using the same budget for a package of smaller measures.
• Continued over-reliance on traditional ‘predict and provide’ planning for new roads that assume increasing traffic levels even though the NETP objectives implicitly require that in future fewer vehicle miles will be driven than now.

Risks relating to Public Engagement

• Failing to make the case for urgent change through lack of, or poor quality public communications.
• Poor quality or overly-long consultations that delay implementation.
• Too much weight given to relatively minor objections, or issues that can be mitigated, compared to the benefits from achieving the plan objectives.
• Mixed messages vs other council policies e.g. free parking offers.

Risks relating to Implementation

• Over-reliance on modelling vs trialling changes.
• Lack of training and expertise within councils and suppliers to make the necessary change to move quickly from traditional vehicle-led design to people-led design of road schemes.

Further barriers and / or risks that apply to specific objectives are set out in the table below.

12. Are there any objectives you would have liked to see which are missing? If so, what are they?

Yes:

Better places – streets as places where we all live, play, socialize, exercise, shop & where people want to live.

13. Do you agree that individual projects will be required to submit Monitoring and Evaluation Plans?

Yes, we agree. The monitoring and evaluation plans need to assess whether schemes support achievement of the NETP objectives.

How much do you agree with the following policy statements?

31. Are there any comments you would like to make on the policy statements?

See table above.

32. Are there any policy statements which you think are missing?

Please see alternative proposals in the table above. In addition we would like to propose:

Active Travel – Streets are easier and safer to navigate for residents or visitors with limited mobility and for residents or visitors with disabilities or conditions for whom travel is a challenge.

Active Travel – There is good walking and cycling access to local community destinations including schools, shops, medical centres, work-places and transport hubs.

Active Travel – Streets are valued as places where people live, meet and socialise, and not just for travelling through.

33. What do you think of the timeline for the delivery of schemes up to 2035?

The pace of change in the plan is massively too slow and risks not achieving set targets especially:

• Achieving air quality legal limits ‘in the shortest possible timescales’.
• Achieving no fatalities or serious injuries on the regions’ road network by 2025.
• Achieving carbon neutral transport by 2030.

34. Are there any schemes which you feel are missing from this timeline? 


Schemes that support these urgent time-bound objectives should be prioritised and delivered early in the plan timescale. These can include:

• Widespread (region-wide) implementation of low traffic neighbourhoods and school streets.
• New main road crossings, in support of new safe walking and cycling networks.
• Narrowing lanes on urban main roads to 3m maximum width for improved safety for all users.
• Trial schemes to reallocate space on main roads to create wider pop-up protected cycle lanes.
• Review of speed limits to meet Vision Zero principles: 20 mph speed limits in cities, 40mph limits on rural minor roads.
• Clear Air Zones where air quality limits are currently not met.
• Using parking charges to manage and limit traffic demand in busy city centres, including workplace parking levies.
• New bus lanes, where space is not needed for walking and cycling facilities.
• Tightening entrances and exits from junctions to prevent vehicles from travelling through those junctions at high speeds, putting other users at risk.
• Better enforcement of traffic offences, including via the use of ANPR cameras.
• Improved winter maintenance of pavements and cycle lanes.
• On-street secure cycle storage (e.g. cycle hoops)
• Definition and implementation of a minimum viable cycle network that connects homes to major destinations and can then be expanded and improved on.
• Creation of a plan for a regional cycle network including traffic-free cycle links between adjacent urban areas e.g. Newcastle to Ponteland, Killingworth or Cramlington.

SPACE for Gosforth has previously submitted evidence-based suggestions for how to reduce carbon emissions to the Newcastle City Council climate change consultation, which can be found here: https://www.spaceforgosforth.com/evidence-about-climate-change/

SPACE for Gosforth has also completed a literature review to find what type of measures have evidence to show they are effective to reduce air pollution, which can be found here: https://www.spaceforgosforth.com/air-quality-what-works/

SPACE for Gosforth’s response to the Newcastle City Council Breathe Clean Air consultation, which proposes schemes to address air pollution in Newcastle can be found here: https://www.spaceforgosforth.com/tag/breathe-clean-air/

We would also like to propose the inclusion of this walking and cycling scheme by Regent Centre in Gosforth: https://www.spaceforgosforth.com/regent-centre/

35. Are there any schemes in our programme which you feel should not be included? 


Yes. Building for more traffic while at the same time forecasting less traffic is just throwing money away, and will lead to more emissions and poor health outcomes.

Link roads, corridor improvements, capacity upgrades, addressing vehicle pinch points, dual carriageways and junction upgrades are how we ended up with a climate crisis and illegal levels of air pollution. More of the same won’t address the climate crisis, won’t solve air pollution, won’t make it safer or more attractive to walk or cycle, won’t address transport poverty, and will further decimate local High Streets as people who can drive are incentivised to travel long-distances to out of town shopping centres rather than supporting local shops.

All the schemes that increase vehicle capacity and encourage more driving need to be re-examined to assess whether they will actually support the objectives or if there are better options including the use of traffic demand management to keep roads clear for those that need to drive most.

Schemes that should be re-evaluated and removed if not consistent with the objectives or if better options exist include:

• Schemes for new car parks, access roads and link roads,
• Additional lanes, dual carriageways, bypasses and any scheme that claims to improve ‘flow’,
• Junction changes designed to increase vehicle throughput, and ‘pinch point’ schemes,
• Changes to vehicle capacity made as part of ‘all user improvements’ or ‘strategic corridor improvements’, and
• Relief roads and new vehicle bridges.

36. Are there any other comments you would like to make? 


In our response to the NECA Walking and Cycling survey in 2017 we said the following, which is equally relevant to the NE Transport Plan.

The strategy [Plan] needs to recognise that every journey driven that could have been undertaken by foot or by cycle:

• Increases travelling cost for the person travelling, money that might otherwise have been spent in the local area.
• Adds to the overall cost of road maintenance.
• Worsens air quality and creates risks for other road users.
• Increases carbon emissions.
• Is a lost opportunity for fresh air and exercise.
• Creates additional demand for parking which means less land available for housing and other more productive uses.

Likewise for every neighbourhood designed to prioritise traffic over place we find:

• Children unable to play outside
• Teenagers not able to travel independently
• Older people stuck alone in their home
• And a community weakened through lack of on-street social interaction.
• Local shops and services diminished because of competition from out of town shopping centres.

Whether or not these are part of the thinking for the transport strategy, or part of its aims, these are the real life outcomes. Nor are these just words. Tens of thousands of people die early each year due to poor air quality near roads. Many more die due to other conditions and illnesses related to how we travel. For example “regular cycling cut the risk of death from any cause by 41%, the incidence of cancer by 45% and heart disease by 46%” (https://www.spaceforgosforth.com/cwis2017/)

By prioritising walking and cycling, the NECA Strategic Transport Plan can deal with air pollution, it can reduce social isolation, it can improve choice for how we travel and make neighbourhoods more accessible for those with reduced mobility. It can reduce road injuries and deaths and reduce the fear that people feel when travelling on foot or by cycle. It can enable children’s independence so they can travel to go to school or play outside with their friends. It can enable people to travel to work and make them feel better when they get there. And it can align individual and community-wide incentives to ensure the transport system as a whole is as efficient as possible.

We hope that Transport North East will seize this opportunity and put in place a robust and well-funded plan to address all these issues as a matter of urgency.

For reference, we have previously responded to two NECA consultations and a consultation by Transport for the North.

The 20 year transport manifesto for the North East, in April 2016 – https://www.spaceforgosforth.com/neca-2016/

The July 2017 NECA Walking and Cycling survey – https://www.spaceforgosforth.com/neca-survey-2017/

Transport for the North Strategic Transport Plan April 2018 – https://www.spaceforgosforth.com/tfn_consultation_questions/

The post North East Transport Plan Consultation – January 2021 appeared first on SPACE for Gosforth.

The Council are consulting on changes to seven junctions in the west of the city. All of these junctions are within about three miles, or a fifteen minutes cycle ride from Gosforth High Street.

The Council say that these junctions have been identified as “problem junctions that need investment to improve efficiency and journey time reliability, as well as provide greener and more active travel choices and improving road safety.”

Have your say on the Council’s Commonplace website until 6 October 2019.

This text, as well as the junction designs, suggest that ‘efficiency’ and journey time reliability are the key priorities for the Council. By efficiency we believe the Council means more cars rather than more people. If the latter we would expect bus priority to be designed in whereas none of the junctions have this.

We might also expect good quality walking and cycling routes as walking and cycling are both very efficient in terms of energy use and space required, and travel times are far more predictable than driving. For local journeys, cycling is frequently quicker than driving too.

More surprisingly is that the Council are proposing junctions that will increase vehicle usage when it was only five months ago in April 2019 when the Council declared a Climate Emergency. The Council has a target to reduce transport emissions by 16.5 kilotons CO2. Designing big junctions that add emissions will just make that target harder to meet.

Back to the Drawing Board (again)

The council has been urged to 'go back to the drawing board' https://t.co/pG1eNpXz4d

— The Chronicle (@ChronicleLive) March 14, 2019

So just like for Haddricks Mill, we are urging the Council to go back to the drawing board. Junction designs need updating to ensure they move people efficiently and safely rather than solely focusing on vehicles.

As these are major schemes, we are also asking the Council to update their consultation material so that:

1. Rather than expecting people to work out what changes are proposed, this is explained e.g. addition of new lanes, traffic lights or crossings.
2. The impact (increase or decrease) in vehicle capacity is made explicit.
3. The impact on green house gas emissions is provided for 3-5 years in the future by which time vehicle numbers will have increased to fully use up the new capacity.
4. Questions relating to congestion are removed from the survey, as the changes proposed are unlikely to make any difference to congestion. Road pricing is the only effective way to achieve a significant and lasting reduction in congestion.
5. Example walking and cycling routes through the junction are explicitly shown on the plans. (We couldn’t tell from some of the plans what routes were proposed.)
6. Relevant Council policies are listed (including climate change and air pollution) and how the proposals will support achievement of those policies.

This will allow the public to take an informed view, and to judge the practical impact of the proposals.

Planning Policies

The consultation also suggests that the ‘problems’ with these junctions has been created by new housing developments in the west of the city.

In the Council’s Development and Allocations Plan policy document the first paragraph under Transport and Accessibility is:

“National policy promotes sustainable development which minimises trip generation and journey length, encourages the use of sustainable modes of transport and promotes accessibility for all. Sustainable development also helps reduce the need for people to travel, manages congestion, improves road safety, meets climate change reduction targets, as well as improving people’s health by creating more opportunities for walking and cycling.”

If these new developments have lead to such substantial increases in traffic that seven separate junctions are impacted and need to be completely re-designed, then feedback needs to be provided to the Council Planning department that their planning process has failed and urgent remediation is required.

The Junction Proposals

Two of the junctions are fairly simple T-junctions, the other five are large cross-roads. We have looked for equivalent junctions in the Netherlands to see what might be possible and so you can compare yourself.

Where the junctions increase vehicle capacity, which appears to be the case in all of the proposals, this will most likely lead to more driving and increased green house gas emissions. As we have said, Newcastle CIty Council needs to explain how this is consistent with declaring a climate emergency, and how it will impact their targets to substantially reduce green house gas emissions.

It’s also worth noting given the frequent use of shared space that, as at Haddricks Mill, this is not likely to be effective in encouraging more people to cycle. Protected cycle lanes are much more effective, as well as being widely supported (78% supported safe all age and ability cycle lanes in the SPACE for Gosforth Your-Streets Your-Views survey).

A. A Dutch T-junction

Our first example is from Ijmuiden close to where the ferry from South Shields docks. If you take bikes on the ferry it’s actually the route from the ferry port to the beach. Both roads have two-way cycle lanes, and the cycle lane on the main road continues in a straight line and has priority over the side road. There are no traffic lights or right hand turn lanes.

There aren’t dedicated pavements at these locations because there are very few people walking, but you can walk along the cycle tracks just as you would walk on the road in the UK countryside.

Junction of Kromhoutstraat and Strandweg in Ijmuiden, Netherlands

B. A Large Dutch Intersection

This example is from Utrecht. It’s actually quite hard to find a junction like this in the Netherlands as many roads this size have underpasses so people can walk or cycle straight through without having to cross the traffic.

It does however show quite clearly the cycle routes (in red). The beige next to the cycle routes is the pavement. The cycle routes are quite wide as they are 2-way on both sides of the roads because the road itself is so large.

Junction of Vleutenseweg and Spinozaweg in Utrecht, Netherlands

This is the Google Streetview for the same junction. The routes are coherent, direct, safe, comfortable and attractive, which, according to the UK Government’s Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Guidance, is how local authorities in the UK should be designing road junctions with cycle provision.

The following are the Council’s proposals, proceeded by Google StreetView of the current junction.

1. Brunton Road/Brunton Lane

The new proposals do include new (shared) pavement and pedestrian crossings, but most of the additional roadspace is to increase the vehicle through-put of the junction.   Cycle lanes are shared, and at the junction to the north are interrupted by an entrance to a side road.

2. Ponteland Road/Station Road

The new proposal is to add traffic lights to the junction, most likely to give more priority to traffic coming from the A696 to the south. This will increase traffic and make it more dangerous for people cycling, who have no dedicated facilities at this location.

3. Ponteland Road/Etal Lane

The addition of traffic lights at this junction will make it easier to cross these very busy roads. Having some separated space for cycling is also a small benefit but overall the experience for people walking or cycling at this junction will still be poor. Routes are incoherent and difficult to read jumping from shared space to separate space and back again, are indirect from both the size of the roundabout and the off-set crossings, safety is compromised for people cycling because the routes don’t connect, and overall it doesn’t look to either be comfortable or attractive.

4. Ponteland Road/Harehills Ave

At Harehills Avenue, again there is an incoherent mix of shared and separate walking and cycling routes. It doesn’t even look possible to travel SW to NE by cycle, even though that is probably one of the most likely uses of this junction by people cycling. Neither Harehills Avenue (NE) nor Blakelaw Road (SW) are marked as roads for through traffic on the Council’s policy map  so it is not clear to us why these roads require multiple exit lanes or two stage crossings.

5. Ponteland Road/Springfield Road

This is very similar to the Harehills junction and suffers from most of the same issues, including the lack of a cycle route from the SW to the NE. There is also plenty of space on Springfield Road for separate protected cycle lanes with minimal adjustment to the current road, if people parking are asked to park on the road rather than the pavement as now.

6. Stamfordham Road/Pooley Road

Coming from the east, the cycle way on the south of the road currently almost reaches the junction so it is not clear why this has been removed. Additional crossings on the west and north sides will be beneficial for people walking.

7. Stamfordham Road/Springfield Road

Again, like all the previous junctions, this junction appears to be designed for maximum vehicle throughput with walking and cycling as an add-on. This is a big area and it would certainly be possible to design something more like the Dutch junction we shared at the top of this blog if the Council chose to do so.

Comment by 6 October

You can have your say on the Council’s Commonplace website until 6 October 2019. Contact details for the Council Cabinet members responsible for Transport and for Climate change are available on the Newcastle City Council website.

You might want to consider mentioning:

• The need for better walking and cycling routes that are coherent, direct, safe, comfortable and attractive.
• The need for walking and cycling to be separate rather than shared space.
• More traffic also means more pollution and more risk of injury for vulnerable road users.
• The Council’s commitment to reduce transport-related CO2 emissions.

The post Junctions West of the City – Comments by 6 October 2019 appeared first on SPACE for Gosforth.

The post Transport For The North – responses due by 17 April appeared first on SPACE for Gosforth.

North Tyneside Council have recently completed a short 10 day consultation on options for regeneration of Station Road North in Forest Hall. Forest Hall is within easy cycling distance of Gosforth, only 15 minutes from South Gosforth Metro, though currently cycling to Forest Hall from Gosforth requires the use of a number of busy and unpleasant roads. It is also likely that anyone from Forest Hall seeking to drive into Newcastle City Centre would travel through both the South Gosforth Air Quality Management Area (AQMA) and the City Centre AQMA.

The consultation states that the proposals “have been developed in response to feedback from ward members who highlighted certain issues within the area – the need for more parking, traffic calming measures, upgrading of the paving materials, replacement street furniture to create a pleasant area for visitors” and that the main choice is between a traditional option [above] or a contemporary look and feel.

According to the Chronicle, the budget for this scheme is £500,000.

SPACE for Gosforth submitted the following general feedback about the scheme with suggestions to improve the public realm and access to shops and local businesses.

Dear sir/madam,

We are writing in relation to the Forest Hall Regeneration Proposals, which North Tyneside Council are currently consulting on, and would like to provide some feedback based on our experience looking at similar issues in the Gosforth area. We understand that as we don’t live in Forest Hall our comments will carry less weight than those that do live nearby however we still hope that we may provide some useful input.

Broadly, we support the scheme aims to re-allocate space to pedestrians and cyclists, to create open spaces, create a more inclusive environment and increase business use. There are a number of aspects to the scheme that  support these aims including:

• new benches
• new cycle stands
• enlarging the pavement and
• adding tactile paving to crossings.

We also support the changes that will help calm traffic and make it safer to walk or cycle by encouraging slower vehicle speeds through the area including the removal of central line markings and the raised table at the junction with station road.

We believe however that there are further opportunities for improvement that could also be made in support of the stated aims and which would require little or no additional investment. These are set out in the attached diagram and in the text below.

SPACE for Gosforth improvement suggestions

1. Parking

We understand that parking is an important consideration for any retail centre and why the Council may wish to consider adding additional capacity. This does mean however that space that was allocated to pedestrians has been lost, apparently in opposition to the scheme’s aims. A quick look at the local map suggests that actually there is a considerable amount of parking in the vicinity, both in the centre itself and in nearby streets, and that little of this is restricted. On that basis we suggest that before any additional spaces are created, and pavement space lost, further analysis is undertaken to confirm that such demand exists and cannot be met through demand management as set out in the North Tyneside Parking Strategy. This might include improvements to walking and cycling facilities or changes to parking regulations.

It will also be useful to consider experience from elsewhere, including locally in Jesmond, where footfall has increased following public realm improvements enabled by the removal of parking spaces. https://www.bikebiz.com/retail/increased-footfall-convinces-hardware-store-owner-to-support-cycling

We also note that Google Maps shows Briar Edge, which has unrestricted parking, as having cars parked blocking the pavement making pedestrian access harder. Addressing this would improve pedestrian access to the shops. 

Google Maps showing Briar Edge

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@55.0224211,-1.5686597,3a,37.5y,144.26h,81.37t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sFgpwxE8cmw-XGbGLIXYDzw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en

2. Improvement for Walking

As shown in the attached diagram the biggest potential improvements are likely to be gained

1. in tightening corners to reduce crossing widths and making crossing safer due to slower traffic speeds, including at the east end of Station Road North.
2. by implementing continuous pavements across junctions to Burn Avenue and the private car park next to Sainsburys, similar to that proposed here for Gosforth High Street: https://www.spaceforgosforth.com/pedestrian-priority/
3. restricting vehicle access on Burn Road to create further pavement space
.
4. address local access issues due to pavement parking
.
5. removing unnecessary pedestrian guard rails.

3. Improvement for Cycling

Making cycling improvements has also been shown to improve business performance, for example as summarised here: https://www.spaceforgosforth.com/bike-business/ We note that North Tyneside Council’s draft cycling strategy states that “cycling is considered as part of all highway and regeneration projects and any new infrastructure is in line with best and emerging good practice.”  https://my.northtyneside.gov.uk/sites/default/files/web-page-related-files/Cycling%20Strategy%20Draft.pdf

Best practice in these circumstances would require the provision of traffic-free cycle paths usable by all ages and abilities and we have sketched out a potential layout in our attached diagram. For Lansdowne Road we note that the Council has proposed one-way access heading south to north. Our suggestion would be to reverse this but also to allow contraflow cycling via a parking-protected cycle lane.

Any changes at this location should also have due regard to North Tyneside’s future Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan (LCWIP). According to LCWIP technical guidance Station Road, in particular the crossing over the railway line, is likely to be a major route connecting the communities that live either side of the railway line and providing onwards access to Killingworth, Longbenton and into Newcastle. We have written about this in relation to Gosforth here: https://www.spaceforgosforth.com/gosforth-safe-cycling/

4. Public Realm

By restricting vehicle access on Burn Avenue and retaining pavement space rather than adding additional, and possibly unnecessary parking spaces, this creates additional space which might for example be used for:

1. additional planters in the entrance to Burn Avenue
2. up to seven additional trees on the south side of Station Road North
3. additional cycle parking locations and
4. further additional seating, including potentially for street cafes similar to Hawthorn Road in Gosforth.

5. Other considerations

The other key issue left unaddressed by the current plan is the footbridge connecting the shopping centre with Albany Avenue which isn’t compliant with the Equality Act 2010 due to its steep steps. Improving this link will help those living west of the railway line to access local shops and businesses. We have written about a similar situation on the Great North Road in Gosforth: https://www.spaceforgosforth.com/great-north-road-proposed-toucan-crossing/

Forest Hall Railway Footbridge – Picture from Google Maps

We hope you will consider these suggestions as we feel there is an significant opportunity to improve the Forest Hall area and attract more people to use local shops on foot and by cycle, and to make it a more pleasant environment for everyone.

More widely, we hope that North Tyneside Council will look to implement further improvements to walking and cycling to give North Tyneside residents the best possible choice of travel options and to address air quality and other public health concerns.

Kind regards,

SPACE for Gosforth.
www.spaceforgosforth.com

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2018 is an important anniversary for Newcastle upon Tyne as it marks 10 years since Air Quality Management Areas (AQMAs) were declared for the city centre (which includes parts of Jesmond and Heaton) and for South Gosforth in 2008.  The city centre AQMA replaced an earlier AQMA in this area.

Newcastle City Centre AQMA

Both Air Quality Management Areas were declared due to levels of the pollutant nitrogen dioxide exceeding legal limits.

Nitrogen dioxide has been linked to a wide range of diseases and other health conditions including cancer, low sperm counts, dementia and cognitive delay in children.

Newcastle City Council recently released figures for nitrogen dioxide levels in 2016, and these showed that a previous trend of nitrogen dioxide levels decreasing in Gosforth has halted and that nitrogen dioxide levels in Gosforth have once again risen to above legal limits.

The South Gosforth AQMA

Members of the public can obtain real time information about levels from pollution from Newcastle University’s Urban Observatory. SPACE for Gosforth has written several previous blogs highlighting high levels of nitrogen dioxide in both AQMAs:

• Black Friday, Smoggy Saturday… (on Gosforth)
• Black Friday Part 2 – Newcastle City Centre
• Pollution Update – February 2017
• The New Newcastle Air Pollution Plan
• Air Quality Update 2016

Air pollution monitoring in 2015

As well as nitrogen dioxide pollution, previous monitoring carried out by SPACE for Gosforth in 2015 suggested that there might also be a problem with particulate pollution on Gosforth High Street.

2018 will also be an important electoral date for the city of Newcastle upon Tyne as residents in all wards will have the opportunity to elect all their three councillors due to the boundary changes. 

Locations where Defra have ordered a reduction in emissions

At SPACE for Gosforth we believe that this election offers residents of Newcastle upon Tyne the opportunity to raise the issue of our filthy air with candidates of all parties and to ask how they would tackle this issue.

Poor air quality affects everyone who lives and works in Newcastle upon Tyne. It is not an issue that our elected representatives can ignore, as they have been ordered to take action by Defra to reduce air pollution on the key city arteries of the Tyne Bridge / Central Motorway, the A1 and the Coast Road. This was following the defeat of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) in the High Court by the environmental law firm Client Earth.

Nitrogen dioxide levels on Blackett St last July – only legal when the road was closed to traffic!

Client Earth has launched further legal action against Defra this year, so it is entirely possible that as one consequence of this action Newcastle City Council may be required by the Government to do even more.  It is also worth noting that Newcastle City Council is currently controlled by the Labour Party, and Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party, has recently publicly stated that tackling air pollution is a national priority for his party should they form a government.

Air pollution monitor on Gosforth High St

The seriousness of this issue, both in its impact on public health and due to the legal obligations that are falling on Newcastle City Council, means that it is one which every candidate for public office in our city needs to understand fully.

In 2018 we hope to hear more from both elected councillors and candidates about what they will be doing this year to ensure that councillors, council officers and others in Newcastle take decisive and effective action to reduce levels of nitrogen dioxide in our city.

Ten years is too long for the health of the public to be put at risk in this way – our ambition for 2018 is that this tenth birthday for both AQMAs is also their last.

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Local charity Recyke y’Bike is a well-established part of the North East cycling scene. Their activities include reconditioning donated bikes to sell at their shops in Byker, Durham and The Journey in Newcastle city centre. They also support local schools, youth groups, other charities and asylum seekers by providing reconditioned bikes. We asked their general manager, Karl McCracken, to write a guest blog about the charity and how people can get involved.

Recyke y’Bike Byker.

Recyke y’bike is one of those charities that always seems to have been around. But we’ve only been here for just over a decade. What we do is really simple – people donate bikes to us and we put them to good use. It’s been pretty successful too, with over 2,000 bikes a year coming in. Of those, nearly 600 go to projects in Kenya and the Gambia, enabling people to get to school, or to work, and raising funds for orphanages and schools. A further 200 or so are given away locally, going to schools, youth groups, other charities and asylum seekers.

 

Recyke y’Bike receive a wide variety of bikes as donations

Dealing with thousands of bikes a year takes some doing. We have around 40 volunteers who help out. They come from a range of backgrounds from retired professionals to those who have mental health problems, learning difficulties, or drug and alcohol issues. Helping them find their way in society is one of our charitable objectives – it’s not all about the bikes!

 

The volunteers help get the bikes ready for our professional mechanics to work on them. Broken bits are taken off, the bikes thoroughly cleaned, and then replacement parts fitted. The mechanics then do the final tune-up and end-to-end safety check.

Inside the Byker workshop

We raise our own funds rather than relying on grant funding. We do this by selling bikes, providing low-cost transport to people in the North East. The average price of a bike from our shops is a little over £100, and in terms of the number of bikes, we’re one of the biggest independent bike shops in the region.

Asylum seekers with Recyke y’Bike staff

Giving bikes away to asylum seekers is something we’ve always done.

Prior to being accepted as a refugee, people arriving in this country who are fleeing war, torture, or persecution (for anything from race to sexual orientation) are distributed to local authorities. They’re housed, and given £37 a week to live on, which has to cover all non-housing expenses. They also have to regularly sign in with the Home Office.

Inside the Journey – Recyke y’Bike’s City Centre branch

That last point can be particularly onerous. I met an asylum seeker at Recyke y’bike last autumn who’d been housed in the West End of Newcastle, and had to travel to South Shields once a fortnight to sign in. With his limited budget, he chose to walk the 30 mile round trip rather than lose out on a day’s food by buying a Metro ticket.

A bike can really help in a situation like this, which is why we give away around 50 bikes a year to asylum seekers. We work with a number of agencies, and each month we put on a day for them to come to our workshop, learn a bit about how to look after a bike, and fix things like punctures. That way, we know they’ll get more value from the bike. We also hope that some will go on to be volunteers with us.

Chris Boardman arriving to open the Journey in 2015

 

As a charity, we rely on the generosity of people in the North East. There are lots of ways to help, from donating any unwanted bikes, or volunteering, or even just doing something as simple as telling your friends about us.

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Newcastle City Council has just published its draft Development and Allocations Plan, which is the second part of the local plan that, with the first part The Core Strategy and Urban Core Plan, will guide how the city is to be developed up to 2030.

You can comment on the new plan on the Let’s Talk website until 20 November 2017.

The new plan sets out policies for Economic Prosperity, Homes, Transport and Accessibility, People and Places, Minerals and Waste, and Infrastructure and Delivery. One aspect of People and Places is Open Space and in this blog we want to look at the proposals for protecting Open Space.

“Surplus” Open Space can now be developed

In the old UDP Policies that include the current Open Space protections, there is a list of sites that are protected through the policies where the policies state development ‘will not be allowed’.

The new Open Space policy standards have ‘quantity standards’ which set out the amount of open space that should be provided per 1000 people. Anything over that will be considered surplus and therefore can be developed providing there is no conflict with other policies, for example relating to nature or wildlife. Using these standards for parks and for amenity green spaces, which are smaller more informal open areas, we have derived the following graph that shows how much surplus Open Space there is by ward according to the new standards. In total we believe approximately 93 hectares, equivalent to 130 football pitches, is at risk as a result of the new standards.

In fact, the area at risk is possibly larger than this as the above graph combines two categories, Parks and Amenity Green Space, and it is possible that development might be justified using just one category. So for example, Dene ward has less Open Space than the standards suggest is required for Parks and Amenity Green Space combined. The total for Parks by itself suggests that there is surplus and therefore current parkland in Dene could be built on.

As part of the assessment the Council’s consultants have drawn up plans of each of the City’s political wards to show where current provision exists. The map below is for East Gosforth but also shows Paddy Freeman’s Park, which is in Dene ward and under these standards could be built on.

Most of the green space in East Gosforth is shown in purple, which are school playing fields and therefore not open to the public. Light blue areas are private facilities such as the golf course just north of Garden Village. Amenity Green Space, what most people would just call greens and are open to the public, are coloured dark green and parks are in lime green, some with blue sports pitches. Also shown in dark red, within parks, are basketball courts and skateparks which collectively are called Youth Play Space, allotments in brown and Natural Green Space (The Town Moor and Jesmond Dene) in beige.

Open Space Standards 

Each of these classifications has its own standard both from quantity as well as access. The Access standard distance is given as a straight line and the times calculated based on walking at 3mph on a route that is 1²/₃ longer than the straight line route. For example 720m straight line distance = 1200m actual walking, which at 3mph will take 15 minutes.

Typical speeds at pedestrian crossings are calculated based on 1.2m/s = 2.7mph, but with guidance suggesting older people are more likely to walk at 0.8m/s = 1.8mph. That would make a nominal 15 minute walk in these standards more like 25 minutes. A similar issue would exist where parks are located near Metro lines and walking distances are actually much further than the1²/₃ times assumed.

The approach taken to coming up with these standards is described in the 2017 Newcastle Open Space Assessment, which is part of the evidence base for the draft Development and Allocations Plan. For Amenity Green Space, the assessment appears to be based on a city-wide average (0.83ha/1000people) and a survey that said 52% of people said more informal open space areas were needed and 43% felt there were enough. No results are given for whether anyone thought there were too many open space areas but if that was counted it would have been less than 5% of responses.

The assessment also mentions a Fields in Trust guideline suggesting 0.6ha/1000 people, so slightly less generous than proposed but with a much shorter walking (not straight line) distance of 480m. The proposed standard suggests a walking distance over twice this, which is counter to separate evidence that children’s independence is being ever more curtailed to a large extent due to danger caused by large volumes of traffic.

Separately in the evidence base for the new plan there are assessments, based on the new standards, to justify development on four existing green spaces. These are:

• Hartburn Walk in Kenton
• Hallow Drive, Throckley
• Thornley Road, Denton
• Somerset Place, Elswick

The guidelines for protecting Open Space are set out in proposed new Policy DM29. This sets out a presumption that Open Spaces are not to be built on but with the new exception 1(i) where there is a surplus over the quantity standard.

Development where there is no surplus

Arguably though, it is not clear what protection this new standard is going to give when planning assessments made by the Council so easily override stated policy based on a ‘material consideration‘ unrelated to Open Space, and when the Planning Committee appears unwilling in these circumstances to assert the priority of the Open Space policies the members themselves approved. Ultimately, unless clear guidelines are put in place to set limits on the use of material considerations to over-ride policies that protect Open Space, far more green space could be irreparably lost to future development.

If you wish to comment on these proposals now is your chance. You can see the proposed Development and Allocations Plan here, and submit comments here until 20 November 2017.

This blog is a very brief summary of the Open Space considerations for Newcastle. For anyone interested in Open Space in the city the 2017 Newcastle Open Space Assessment sets out all the previous policies for Open Space and how they have changed over time, and if you spot anything else interesting in the standards please let us know via the Comments section below.

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The Newcastle City Centre Air Quality Management Area

On 26 July the Government announced its Air quality plan for nitrogen dioxide (NO2) in UK (2017). The objective of the plan is to reduce concentrations of NO2 around roads where levels are above legal limits and to do so within the shortest possible time. To achieve this the Government has directed local authorities to create their own draft plan to achieve this by March 2018.

Clearly, just waiting for natural vehicle replacement as proposed by the Capita report will not fit this criteria.

Newcastle and Gateshead

For Newcastle and Gateshead, DEFRA has identified locations on the the A1 bypass, the Coast Road and the Tyne Bridge where air quality is the worst. The latter two are part of the Newcastle City Centre Air Quality Management Zone, which we wrote about here. That’s not to say that Newcastle City Council can ignore air pollution in the City Centre itself, which is still over the limit, or in Gosforth where levels currently just under the limit could be made worse as a result of induced traffic from road ‘upgrades’ or from additional traffic from poorly planned new estates on the edge of the city.

Looking at the Google Traffic website (see below) it is clear that these locations, which are all on major roads, are already heavily trafficked. Green routes on the map below mean traffic is flowing freely and red routes are where there is heavy traffic. This snapshot was taken during the summer school holidays so at other times of the year could be even worse.

We also have data from the TADU website on the number of vehicles that were using these routes each week day in 2015:

• A1 bypass: 65,189 vehicles (at Blaydon Bridge)
• Coast Road: 57,650 vehicles (A1058 west of Station Road, Wallsend)
• Tyne Bridge: 69,155 vehicles (A167 Tyne Bridge – on north side)

Clearly these traffic volumes are more than those routes can cope with and still have free-flowing traffic.

Google Traffic – Live Traffic at 5.30pm 27 July 2017. Click the image to see the current traffic levels

Although it is often stated that adding road capacity to relieve congestion is a good way of reducing air pollution, studies have shown this is not the case. Congestion, as well as slowing traffic, also acts as a limit to the total amount of traffic and therefore pollution on a route. Where roads are widened to include additional lanes that invariably leads to additional ‘induced traffic‘ and possibly also to higher levels of pollution.

For the A1 bypass this could be a serious issue. Traffic widening on the section identified by DEFRA has already happened and further widening, further north and south, will cause even more traffic to use that route. The required plans will need to take account of this and introduce measures that counteract this effect.

Gateshead Council’s plan will also need to involve the Gateshead Metro Centre given the high levels of traffic (and therefore pollution) it generates and the impact of that pollution on customers and staff. While there are options for how to access the Metro Centre, massive incentives such as 10,000 free parking spaces, funded indirectly by all customers whether they drive or not, and hundreds of millions of pounds of tax-payer funded investment in surrounding roads means that most people who can drive will. With the imperative to act on air quality it is unlikely that such a skewed model can be sustainable.

Highways Agency A1 upgrade plans – from the A1 Scotswood to North Brunton Improvement Scheme brochure

Time for Action

The new plans to be proposed by Newcastle, Gateshead and North Tyneside Councils will need to be a step change from the current plans if they are to meet the Government’s directive of meeting air quality targets in the shortest possible timescales. Now the Government has delegated planning to local authorities, Councils also have an additional incentive to do this as if they do not they could be liable to legal challenge. In Germany this is already happening and Stuttgart has just been ordered by a court to restrict access to the city by diesel vehicles from 1 January 2018 because the plans they had produced were inadequate.

Newcastle City Council has already started consulting with stakeholders including bus companies and business owners about how to address air pollution, which is a good start. It also urgently needs to engage with residents to set out a vision of a healthy city with clean air, vibrant local centres and good quality choices for how we travel including walking, cycling, bus and metro. In doing so it can turn this ‘negative’ that has blighted the health of generations into something positive for the future of the city and the surrounding region.

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At SPACE for Gosforth, we have learned that the planning system plays a vital part in our civic life.  At its best the planning process can improve a vibrant, healthy community – but bad planning can leave a legacy of problems for future generations.  

The planning process is also a system that is not always understood and is further complicated by the use of legal terms and jargon.

So SPACE for Gosforth is delighted to have permission to share Blue Kayak‘s Guide to the planning system (1) – as we believe the planning system is something that every citizen needs to understand.

A Busy Citizen’s Guide to the Planning System

As the title implies, this is not a detailed analysis of the planning system. Nor is it a guide for householders or business people wishing to carry out a development, or wanting to find out whether planning permission is needed for a given project – although excellent, bespoke advice and support from project planning to application is available from Blue Kayak at very reasonable prices. It is a brief for those who wish to have an input on matters relating to land use and built development, either with regard to a specific proposal or in more general terms.

What is the planning system, and why should we care?

19th century Gosforth – Gosforth developed rapidly at that time due to mining

For most of human history, if you wanted to build a house (say) and had rights over the intended site, you would simply do so. During the later nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries, however, as the population expanded and the Industrial Revolution happened, concerns began to be voiced: firstly, about the growth of slums in the new industrial cities; secondly, about the extension of towns and cities into the surrounding countryside.

 

The solution – reached in 1947 with the passing of the Town and Country Planning Act – was simple and radical, and has essentially remained in force since then. Anyone wishing to build anything would have to seek permission from the relevant local authority. For its part, the local authority would have to produce a development plan stating what sort of development would be permitted, and where.

Great Park – a major greenfield development bordering on Gosforth and built by a consortium of developers

What has changed since 1947 is that local authorities in the UK do not, by and large, build very much themselves. Phrases such as “planners will be expected to deliver x houses in the next 10 years” or “planners wish to build a new shopping centre…” are often used but are shorthand for the process that actually exists, in which planners decide that, should a proposal to build the desired houses or shopping centre be made by a third party, it would be approved. They may, of course, discuss the proposals with developers, but have no power to make them carry them out.

Planning has become one of the key elements of local democracy. Local planning decisions are made in public, by elected politicians, throughout the year, in a forum where any citizen may attend and comment. The decisions don’t just affect what towns, cities and the countryside look like. They affect the way in which places function – whether they support social justice and environmental sustainability, whether enterprise can succeed, and whether people have access to accommodation and employment.

Policy: what decisions are based on

Indigo Park is another local development under construction

Theoretically, whether a development is permitted or not should depend upon whether it is in accordance with national and local policy.

National policy is summarised within a terse document called the National Planning Policy Framework, which falls within a web-based resource called Planning Practice Guidance. These can be accessed here.

 

Just about every new government makes changes to the way local planning policy is produced; since the process for producing it is lengthy and involves several stages of public consultation, this means that in terms of its format, it is nearly always out of date. However, a council’s planning policy – currently called, imaginatively, a Local Plan – always consists of a document or documents, accompanied by maps, describing the type, quantity and location of development that the authority would be willing to permit, over a given period of time (normally 20 years).

Newcastle City Council has published a number of documents which make up its Local Plan; the most important one is the Core Strategy, which can be accessed here.

Any factor which may be considered in a planning decision is called a “material consideration”; these may include things that aren’t specifically mentioned within local or national policy. However, certain things are “non-material considerations” which may not be taken into account. By and large, these involve effects upon a neighbour where it is only in his private interest, rather than the public interest, that his objection should be upheld. So a proposal may not be opposed on the grounds that it would devalue a neighbour’s house, or that a new business would compete with existing ones. (Since, however, obstructing light is a material consideration, whereas spoiling a view is non-material, the distinction may not always be obvious!)

The Application Process

Certain types of development – small extensions and garden sheds, for example – can be carried out without planning permission. These are “permitted development”; the easiest guide to what is and what is not permitted development can be found here.

La Sagesse in Jesmond includes both a John Dobson house and new build

Anyone wishing to build anything else must submit an application. The amount of information required will depend upon the scale of development, and its likely impacts – so a large housing development may be accompanied not just by site plans and drawings of the proposed houses but also by flood risk assessments, wildlife surveys, and so on.

The local authority must publicise planning applications – in general, all are publicised online and may be viewed at local authority offices; they may also be publicised via notices placed on the development site, letters to neighbours and other concerned parties, and/or advertisements in the local press.

La Sagesse development in Jesmond

A decision should be made within 8 weeks of a complete application being received – 13 weeks in the case of large or complex proposals. Theoretically, the decision rests with the Planning Committee – a group of councillors chosen for this purpose – but in practice most proposals, particularly less significant ones, are determined by planning officers and are therefore “delegated” decisions.

 

Appeals

If a proposal is rejected, the applicant may appeal against the decision. The proposal will then be re-examined by an independent inspector, who may either approve it or uphold the rejection. There is no third-party right of appeal against an approved proposal.

How you can get involved

New flats in an old street – Hawthorn Rd, Gosforth

There are two main points at which any citizen may get involved in the planning process: when a Local Plan is being put together, and when a specific application is being determined.

A Local Plan should be extensively publicised through online consultations, public meetings, exhibitions, etc. These should culminate in an Examination in Public – a series of meetings, chaired by an outside Planning Inspector, at which interested parties may speak.

Anyone may comment on a planning application for 21 days (often longer) after it is made public. In Newcastle, the easiest way to find out what applications have been received, and to comment on them, is to look online here.

You can also sign up to receive alerts if an application is made in your area.

An old building with a change of use – Woodbine Rd, Gosforth

If a proposal is determined at a meeting of the planning committee, objectors and supporters have a right to speak at the meeting. Generally, only a short amount of time will be allotted for this purpose, to be divided between all those who wish to speak on the same “side”; if there are many, it would be advisable to pick one or two people to speak for everyone.

You may, of course, appoint a planning consultant to object to a proposal in writing, and/ or to speak on your behalf at a planning committee meeting. The advantages of doing so are, firstly, that it saves you the trouble of having to go through the various documents yourself to determine where, and whether, the proposal accords or otherwise with local or national policy; secondly, a consultant will have a better idea of what factors should be emphasised in the submission.

Other consultants besides Blue Kayak are available, but they aren’t writing this article, and in any case would, I’m sure, fail to exhibit the same level of detailed analysis and expressive-yet-factual turn of phrase.

Closing remarks

A new development on Gosforth High Street

The planning system is supposed to serve the public good. It isn’t supposed to serve the narrow interests of those who wish to see no change at all in their area even if it means people are homeless, nor the narrow interests of housebuilders and landowners who wish to make money even if it harms societies and landscapes. Planners, of course, have a difficult job balancing up the competing requirements of different groups of people and of the environment; most of the time they more or less succeed; we tend to hear about it when they don’t.

We do not have a perfect planning system, but we do have a process which provides everyone with a real opportunity to comment on the way our towns and cities develop; and, theoretically at least, the more people do so, the better the places we create will serve us.

A few useful concepts

One of our members had this suggestion for a developer contribution

Developer contributions: these are sums paid by a developer to the local authority where the proposed development is thought to make certain social works necessary – things like highway improvements, schools and affordable (i.e. social) housing. By and large, developers will try to argue that they can’t afford them.

There are two main mechanisms by which developer contributions are paid:

• Section 106 Agreements – agreements made on a case-by-case basis between the local authority and the developer
• Community Infrastructure Levies (CIL) – a blanket fee levied on all applications which meet certain criteria. The advent of CIL was supposed to make things simpler, because setting up two different systems to do the same thing generally does have that effect.

Planning conditions: these are requirements set by the local authority when they permit an application. They may, for example, require a landscaping scheme to be submitted and approved before the development goes ahead.

Green Belt: this is an area around a town or city, specifically designated as a place where new development will not generally be permitted. The main purpose is to stop the outward growth of urban areas. Green Belts should not be confused either with “greenfield sites” – i.e. sites which have not been developed in the past – or the open countryside as a whole.

5-year land supply: local authorities are required to show, on a rolling basis, that there is enough suitable land within their area where they would permit housing if it were proposed, to meet the needs of the population for five years. This is important because, if the 5-year land supply doesn’t exist and a housing proposal is rejected, an inspector may approve it even if it conflicts with other policies.

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 (1)  We would like to thank Josephine Ellis of Blue Kayak for her kind permission to publish this post, originally published on the  Blue Kayak blog.

The post A Busy Citizen’s Guide to the Planning System appeared first on SPACE for Gosforth.

A packed Trinity Church at the SPACE for Gosforth Blue House Meeting

In our look back at 2015, the year SPACE for Gosforth was formed, we wrote that this was only the beginning and that in 2016 we had a whole year to make a difference.  What we could not have anticipated at that time was the immense difference that 2016 would bring to our community.

Something old … Gosforth High Street

A better Gosforth High Street was the reason SPACE for Gosforth was founded in 2015, and we continued to focus on the High Street 2016.

A High Street filled with hidden dangers!

We began the year by publishing an account of a walk by one of our members on Gosforth High Street to raise awareness of the challenges faced by those with a visual impairment.  Our member was blindfolded and accompanied by a volunteer guide from Guide Dogs for the Blind, and his walk revealed a High Street filled with hidden – and not so hidden – dangers.  This would be an issue for any community given that the UK has an ageing population, but it is a particular issue for Gosforth as three Gosforth schools house Newcastle City Council’s Visual Impairment Additionally Resourced Centres.

Gosforth High Street

Newcastle City Council also agreed to work with SPACE for Gosforth and local traders to improve plans for Gosforth High Street.  These improvements will take place in stages – the first stage to be agreed was improvements for pedestrians, which has recently been the subject of a consultation.

South Gosforth AQMA

Gosforth High Street is part of the South Gosforth Air Quality Management Area.  The South Gosforth AQMA was declared due to high levels of nitrogen dioxide, and is one of two AQMAs in Newcastle upon Tyne (the other is the City Centre AQMA, which has even higher levels of nitrogen dioxide).  SPACE for Gosforth began investigating this issue in 2015 and we continued to highlight the issue of air pollution during 2016 as well as other costs to the community of the negative impacts of traffic.  By contrast, research confirms that increasing cycling has a positive effect on local business.

Air pollution monitor on Gosforth High St.

During the autumn, we were able to track daily readings from the Gosforth High Street air pollution monitor thanks to Newcastle University’s Urban Observatory project.

We were very worried to note the increase in levels of nitrogen dioxide on Gosforth High Street before Christmas  – and a similar increase in the City Centre Air Quality Management Area.

This is an issue SPACE for Gosforth intends to continue investigating due to the risk to residents’ health from air pollution.

Responses to Brunton to Broadway Consultation

Further north from Gosforth High Street on the Great North Road, we also looked at the responses to the proposed new cycle route between Broadway and Brunton Lane, a proposal that received strong support during the consultation.  The graph on the left shows the reasons why respondents liked the proposals.

Despite this, there have been concerns raised relating to the introduction of a toucan crossing.  We examined the issues relating to this crossing, in particular the need for a fully accessible crossing at this point.

Something new … adding to the local debate

SPACE for Gosforth was founded to add new information to the local debate and to take action on the challenges facing Gosforth, and we did this in a number of ways in 2016.

One important local issue we wished to examine at was the issue of drivers speeding on many of Gosforth’s residential streets, so we obtained and analysed traffic counts from Newcastle City Council to provide residents with accurate data about this issue.

When  Gosforth’s speed cameras made the local news, we analysed speed camera data to show that there has been a reduction of accidents since these cameras have been installed.

East Gosforth crash map

We returned to the issue of speeding at the time of the East Gosforth Ward Survey and Priority Event, when we also examined air pollution levels and road traffic casualties in East Gosforth Ward to provide residents with information on this issues .

Protected cycle lane on the Great North Road

Another issue we examined was children’s experience of cycling in our community.  We began by looking at safe cycling routes for children when we applied the research of Dr Rachel Aldred of Westminster University to our local cycling routes.  We found that while Gosforth does have examples of routes that are safe for children to cycle, these do not link together to form a coherent network and many streets are unsuitable for children.

We were also able to give an insight into how children see their school run in March, when we were privileged to be given permission by Archibald First School to publish a letter written by some of their pupils describing the near misses they have experienced on their way to school and requesting that parents drive safely around their school.

In April several local schools took part in The Big Pedal, a challenge to encourage children to cycle safely to school.  We reported on the results at the end of the first week and at the end of the Big Pedal, when three Gosforth headteachers all commented on how much their pupils enjoyed travelling by bike.

A close pass at the Regent Centre

We also looked at the Safe Overtaking petition, a parliamentary petition for a safe overtaking distance, and published a YouTube video clip showing a close pass near a Gosforth primary school.

The petition closed with 23,834 signatures, however the Government responded that it does not currently have any plans to change the legislation.  This is concerning as many of our members have shared their experience of suffering close passes when cycling in our city.

Electric bike in the park

Also in April we organised a taster session of Electric Parks in Gosforth Central Park.  Despite torrential rain, this session proved popular and one resident even arrived before the session began as he was so keen to try the bikes.  “Just brilliant” was the verdict of our members who collected the bikes from the Cycle Hub!

SPACE for Gosforth would like to see more events like this in Gosforth and we were pleased to see Go Smarter to Work organising an event in December at Trinity Church.  We also created the Bike Bingo Card for Bike Week.

John Dobson Street

2016 also saw the opening of Newcastle’s flagship cycle route on John Dobson Street, and we were impressed to find that the improvements have humanised a street that was previously inhospitable for both pedestrians and cycling.

Newcastle / Amsterdam

During the media debate following the opening of the John Dobson Street route Newcastle was often compared with Amsterdam, so we looked at what the two cities have in common.  We found that while both have iconic bridges, lively nightlife and great architecture, there is much we can learn from Amsterdam as it has higher numbers of cyclists, higher driver satisfaction and a much higher GDP.

Something borrowed … working with others

Crash Map for Station Road

In January SPACE for Gosforth members met East Gosforth Councillor Henry Gallagher on Station Road to investigate residents’ concerns about proposals for parking, which were felt to be a possible danger to cyclists.  The plans were later withdrawn and other plans included as part of the Haddricks’ Mills proposals (more on these proposals below).

We ended January by holding a talk with a guest speaker, Professor Mark Tewdwr-Jones of Newcastle University, about the City Futures project, which looked at what Newcastle might look like in 2065.

Monitor on the High Street

Following our air pollution monitoring on Gosforth High Street in 2015, we held a joint meeting in April with the Tyne and Wear Public Transport Users Group on air pollution with guest speakers Professor Margaret Bell and Dr Anil Namdeo from Newcastle University to explain this threat to our health.

The Netherlands is an inspiration for Almere Consulting

Finally in November, we held a meeting with Tom Bailey of Almere Consulting as our guest speaker to introduce his Garden City Guide to Active Travel.  Tom created his Guide after realising there was a gap in design standards for new large scale developments – and with so many new estates planned for Newcastle and its neighbouring communities, this was a gap that urgently needed filling.

Something Blue … Blue House Roundabout, Jesmond Dene Road and Haddricks Mill

The Blue House roundabout

In April we looked at the North-East Combined Authority’s survey on the future of transport in our region.  NECA’s vision of the future for Gosforth became clear in July when plans for “improvements” to the Blue House roundabout, Jesmond Dene Road and Haddricks’ Mill roundabouts were published.

The proposals for Blue House

All three proposals caused outrage throughout the Gosforth Community and beyond, particularly Blue House, which would have had a devastating effect on Newcastle’s iconic Town Moor.

The iconic Town Moor cows

SPACE for Gosforth objected to these proposals on these grounds and due to the risk to public health,  and because the proposals would not work.  We wrote an open letter to the NE Local Enterprise Partnership, who were contributing funding for the proposals and later received this reply.

Protest ribbons on the Little Moor

As SPACE for Gosforth believed that improvements for pedestrians and cyclists were needed at all three locations, we arranged a public meeting at Trinity Church to discuss alternatives.  We thought it was important that our community must not only say what it did not want, but also what it did want.

SPACE for Gosforth public meeting at Trinity Church

The result of the unprecedented community rejection of these plans led to a public meeting organised by Chi Onwurah, MP for Newcastle Central, and also attended by Catherine McKinnell MP (Newcastle North), Cllr Ged Bell and Graham Grant (Head of Transport Investment).

Chi Onwurah MP speaking at Trinity Church

Following this meeting SPACE for Gosforth was invited to join the Blue House Working Group. Information about the group can be found on the Blue House Working Group website, and we have also blogged about the first, second, fifth and sixth Blue House meetings.

Graphic Representation of the 2nd Blue House Meeting

The future of Blue House will continue to be decided during 2017, and we set out a series of measures of success for both policies and for people movement against which the final plans (when published) can be judged.

Poor planning at Gosforth Business Park

Shortly after the Blue House public meeting, plans were submitted to North Tyneside Council for a development on Gosforth Business Park which illustrated how planning can influence the type of journeys we make. We were very concerned to find that these plans made no reference to the nearby South Gosforth Air Quality Management Area and were likely to increase traffic in the AQMA.  With many other nearby developments planned, planning will remain an issue of concern in 2017.

And 2017?

Looking back on 2016, we are amazed at challenges our community has faced and are proud that we have added to local debate and have taken action to improve road safety and air quality in our community.

But these challenges will continue in 2017 – please join us to help make a difference!

The post SPACE’s 2016: some things old, new, borrowed and BLUE appeared first on SPACE for Gosforth.