CHALLENGE OF NEW TRANSPORT GRANT SYSTEM
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"IT WOULD be too much to hope that the recent grouping of government departments and the creation of transportation authorities in the shape of the GLC and the new metropolitan and• non-metropolitan counties will bring solutions quickly, but at least they should create conditions in which solutions may conceivably be found."
With these introductory words to a masterly paper entitled "The New Transportation Grants" Mr F. Tolson, city treasurer of Leeds, hinted to APPTO delegates this week at Liverpool that the future structure of local government presented immense challenges in the field of transport and environmental planning.
He said new concepts in land-use planning, with a view of ensuring more flexibility in the system, would involve the public in the planning process. The somewhat rigid system of development plans, reviewed at long intervals, was being abandoned. Now, county councils, as strategic planning authorities, had to produce "structure plans" — statements of long-term planning policy for the county — within which more specific "local plans" would be drawn up by lower-tier (district) planning authorities, with a degree of involvement of the county council, and maximum publicity and consultation.
Mr Tolson said the process of unification of land use and transport — subject to very minor exceptions — had made possible a further move away from specific grants, akin to the Rate Support Grant, to a system of transportation block grants, related to comprehensive "Transportation Policies and Programme" (TPPs) submitted annually for the approval of the Department of the Environment, and continuously reviewed. It now remained for the Department to carry through its own reorganization of Ministerial responsibilities, and the functions of its branches, to bring reality to the concept, and give it a fair chance to work.
It was necessary, stressed Mr Tolson, for financial planners to seek to understand the planners' problems and in turn, planners must take full account of likely resource constraints.
For the first time
The creation of new county councils, both metropolitan and non-metropolitan, with no "island" county boroughs, provided for the first time a comprehensive planning authority for both land use and transport over an area adequate for the purpose.
The county council, as strategic land-use planning authority under the Town and Country Planning Act, 1971, was required to prepare "structure plans" designed to condition the development of the area over a period of 20 to 25 years. The more detailed applications of the principles of the structure plan were covered in local plans, which would be the responsibility of district councils, with some county council involvement on key issues.
Mr Tolson said the new county councils would have the duty under the Local Government Act 1972, to plan the development of a co-ordinated and efficient system of public passenger transport to meet the needs of the county. The relevant clauses were S.202 (metropolitan counties) or 203 (non-metropolitan counties). These duties were complementary, and placing them with one authority at least made their discharge theoretically possible.
There were, however, all manner of problems to be tackled — technical, administrative and financial -and they involved a three-cornered relationship between central government (and the taxpayer), the local authority (and the ratepayer) and the general public (who were both taxpayers and ratepayers, as well as the ultimate consumers of this service).
At the outset, it was necessary to distinguish the essential difference in nature between the land-use strategic plan (the "structure plan") and the TPP policy documents through which the county council, as transport authority, discharged its functions under the Local Government Act 1972, in relation to various parts of the county.
The former was a set of statutory documents subject to defined processes of consultation and approval by the Secretary of State which, once approved, was statutorily binding on all parties — though like the present development plans, subject to amendment, as required. The TPP's purpose was administrative; it had no place in statute. It sets out the nature of the transport problems identified, the solutions considered, and finally adopted, the costs involved, and the phasing of action to be taken over the next 10-15 years.
Unlike the structure plan, said Mr Tolson, the TPP was reviewed annually, up-dated, and where necessary amended in the light of current developments. It served the authority as a budget planning document and enabled the Secretary of State to satisfy himself of the adequate discharge of the local authority's functions in transport, thus determining the appropriateness of the scale of resource commitment indicated, and assessing the proportion of the estimated expenditure to be met by the Exchequer.
Public participation
Despite the "internal control" nature of the TPP, said Mr Tolson, the policies embodied in it were an essential element of the structure plan, and therefore indirectly subject to the public participation process. He used the word "policies" rather than "programmes" because of the longer time-scale of the structure plan and the need for flexibility in developing and implementing the various programmes within the TPP without too much commitment in the statutory processes attending the structure plan.
The programmes were more directly concerned with local plans because of the shorter time-scale, and the more specific nature of the actions comprised within these plans; the common feature of the two streams was in the planning processes leading up to the final outputs from studies which were needed for both purposes, and processed by teams of planners involved.
The structure plan was, of course, the dominant factor, and its policies must be borne continually in mind during each review of the TPP as any major change in the TPP involving a substantial departure from the structure plan would require formal amendment of the latter, before it could be given Ministerial approval.
Said Mr Tolson: "Theire are niceties of procedure which will involve the DoE in some judicious tightrope walking, in that its officers, both local and central, will be in continuous dialogue with officers of the county council on matters of the TPP, and issues will arise in relation to the structure plan, which the Secretary of State has to approach judicially, and justice must be manifestly seen to be don."
. 4. While the structure pl was prepared for the county as a whole TPPs would be produced for each major conurbation area within the county (ie of upwards of 150,000 population) based on a separate land-use/transportation study.
Master plan
The problems within the county were interrelated and this implied some sort of master plan gathering together all the TPPs in a single policy statement for the county, said Mr Tolson. Some issues even
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transcended the coi nty boundaries, especially in the c se of adjacent metropolitan counties such as Merseyside and Greater Manchester to the West of the Pennines and South and West Yorkshire to the east.
The Department summarized the processes of preparation of a TPP as follows: — 10 Taking stock of various situations.
• Forecasting main trends, problems and objectives.
CI Identifying ranges of realistic policy options 'or combinations to meet these objectives.
E Testing alternatives and evolving a preferred plan.
O Taking decisions on phasing and implementation as the basis for an expenditure programme.
Within this sequence, policy would develop in five separate though obviously interrelated streams: — 1 highway investment; 2 traffic management and pedestrianization; 3 public transport investment; 4 public transport revenue support; 5 parking controls and pricing.
Mr Tolson noted that the intensity of transport problems varied widely and were greatest in the metropolitan counties. This would mean variation in the level of resources committed to the preparation of country TPPs and varying times before the programmes reach definitive shape.
The first four of the sequential steps in preparing a TPP were termed collectively a "transportation study" said the speaker. In future — in contrast to previous approaches — there would be recognition that land-use planning and transport planning were inter-dependent; therefore the former premise that transport studies should take as a basic input the concepts and decisions of the established development plans was no longer valid. The new structure plans would themselves have to take account of transport studies forming the basis of TPPs.
So that instead of ringing the changes on different "mixes" of input resources (highway investment, public transport investment, traffic management, and so on) to fit a defined land-use plan, future transport studies would have to produce sets of "mixes" for each of the various options of land-use plan which would be examined and compared before the final structure plan emerges.
Mr Tolson pointed out that the planning processes were further complicated by the differing time-scales of the two main components, the structure plan producing a strategy for the next 20-25 years, whereas the practical use of TPPs was of the order of 10 -15 years only, probably broken down into five-yearly action periods to compare the different results of different sequences, and thereby assess priorities.
The planning process would involve the closest possible working between Ministry officers at headquarters concerned with national policy, the controllers (roads and transport) in the regions, and the technical and financial officers of county and district councils, Passenger Transport Executives and regional health and water authorities, all of whom had their long-term planning commitments. as well as a place in the collective team, and each would depend on his ov,n authority and no other, for the capital and revenue resources the development plans would call for.
Misgivings Mr Tolson expressed misgivings about the effectiveness of arrangements at the various levels bearing in mind that just as each individual local service was part of the total local picture. so local government as a whole was only part of the total fabric of public services claiming a share of the national cake. Moreover, wider considera tions would have to be faced from time to time by Government, which will affect local or regional aspirations.
Subject to legislation it was proposed that all specific highways and local transport grants would cease from April 1 1975, except for grants to bus operators for new buses and rebate of motor fuel duty. Instead, additional money would be provided in the Needs Element of Rate Support Grant, payable to all county councils on objective factors including at present population density and roat mileage. The remainder would be mad available selectively as a transpor supplementary grant on the basis of need ii each county, assessed from year to year b] the Secretary of State on consideration o transport policy statements, and pro grammes of estimated expenditure in givin effect to those policies, ie the TPPs.
It was not yet fully clear Mr Tolsca continued exactly how the supplementan grant would be calculated, or up-dated tc allow for price changes, but the criterion o need for supplementary grant purpose: would be that the approved level o expenditure disclosed in the TPPs was sc far above a basic level known as th( "threshold" that it would be unreasonable tc expect an authority to meet the whole of tilt excess. TPPs disclosing a level oi expenditure below the "threshold", woulC not attract transport supplementary grant. beyond that level, a percentage of estimated expenditure would be met by supplementary grant.
Lump sum grants Mr Tolson concluded with the thought that though he was in favour of the philosophy of lump sum grants on a non-specific basis rather than an "open-ended" percentage grant system for individual services, there were difficult administrative and policy issues in prospect. The competence and enthusiasm of Government advisers impelled them to push along the development of the services most concerning them. While constrained by Departmental budgets for their own direct services, they constantly urged their local counterparts to develop services, with little regard to the policy decisions .on expenditure levels on which the grants were based.
Ministers often pursued the same line with local authorities, with understandable frustration as a result. He hoped that such irrelevance would be avoided and that at times of crisis "the fact that transportation taps are easiest to turn, and are hence the ones turned off" would be avoided.