Why no follow up on request to developers?

Questions asked over sustainable travel plan checks

A community council has questioned why the local authority asks developers to come up with travel plans for sites if it does not check to see if they are followed once schemes are approved.

Bridgend, Gannochy and Kinnoull Community Council (BGKCC) raised the issue after learning officials had advised a company wanting to create a new 77-bed care home in Perth to prepare a staff travel plan.

Transport planning officer Mike Lee has recommended Westerwood devise the document to set how staff would be encouraged to use “sustainable modes of travel” instead of cars to get to and from the proposed facility off the A85 Dundee Road.

He said in a report on Westerwood’s planning application: “A staff travel plan incorporating sustainable modes of travel and management of staff use of the car park should be provided prior to approval.”

But BGKCC has questioned the point of this exercise after establishing no-one from PKC monitored the outcome of a similar plan produced over a decade ago to encourage Murray Royal Hospital (MRH) workers to use public transport.

The group has already told PKC it thinks Westerwood is proposing to create far too few car parking spaces for care home staff as the company has only just agreed to provide the “absolute minimum” of 31.

BGKCC has now recommended officials insist on more spaces being formed for cars as members do not consider the council can rely on a travel plan discouraging people from driving in future.

BGKCC has told PKC in a second objection to the overall scheme being approved: “PKC claims that the developer will be required to prepare a travel plan to encourage staff to use public transport.

“A similar condition ... was imposed on the Murray Royal Hospital development in 2009 when parking spaces, again, were constrained. When the plan was duly produced in March of 2010, the condition was deemed to be discharged.”

The group claims the plan was never monitored or enforced and “consequently it resulted in rogue and dangerous parking in the hospital and nearby grounds”.

“Making a plan should never be a planning condition. Anyone can make a plan. Very few can make a plan that works.

“Given the local authority’s history in signing off a condition for a travel plan without stewarding the outcome of that plan, we do not accept PKC’s compromised number of parking spaces and insist that the National Guideline is adopted.”

Asked about the travel plan that was agreed for MRH, a council spokesperson commented: “There