London’s government should have more power over tax and more freedom to borrow to ensure the capital’s transport infrastructure can keep pace with growing demand, the final report of the London Finance Commission said this week. “London government needs fewer borrowing constraints and greater devolved tax powers to enable it to invest more comprehensively without the need for ad hoc, project-by-project financing arrangements,” said the commission, which was chaired by...

In 2011 Halcrow followed other well-known UK transport planning and engineering consultancies Colin Buchanan, Gifford and Scott Wilson and passed into overseas ownership. US-based global infrastructure giant CH2M HILL purchased Halcrow for £124m, the 6,000-strong workforce of the UK firm boosting the Colorado company’s headcount to nearly 30,000. It was a deal that made sense for both firms. Halcrow, like the UK’s civil engineering consultancy sector as a whole, was...

Local authorities in the North East of England are drawing up plans for a Combined Authority that will lead to the demise of the Tyne and Wear Integrated Transport Authority. A governance review is currently underway covering Durham, Northumberland and the five Tyne and Wear conurbation authorities: Newcastle, Gateshead, Sunderland, North Tyneside and South Tyneside. The CA would comprise the leaders of the seven authorities and take decisions on transport, economic development, and...

One hundred and one years after the compulsory appointment of medical officers of health by local authorities, the NHS Reorganisation Act 1973 set in train the removal of the public health function from local authorities. Consequently, most transport planning practitioners working today will have no recall of this 1970s milestone (and not all public health practitioners will either). Public health has spent most of its life within municipal government.The sanitary reform movement of the 19th...

It is now 40 years since the then Department for the Environment published its proposals for Transport Policies and Programmes (TPPs). The TPP, uniquely in Europe, provided local authorities with the encouragement to adopt an integrated approach to local transport planning and the powers, guidance and finance to facilitate this. Sadly, as is often the way in the UK, successive governments could not resist tinkering with a successful system.  By the 1980s TPP funding was only available for...

Transport has always fascinated Dave Merrett. As a child he ran the school transport society; it wasn’t all steam trains, there was Scalectrix too. He went on to become a civil engineer in British Rail’s bridge design and assessment team. Today, at the age of 58, he still works part-time for Amey on Network Rail’s bridge assessment contract. But it’s through his political career as a York city councillor that Merrett has been able to put his wider ideas about transport...

Local Transport authorities in the North of England are to be sent a prospectus setting out how local rail services could be governed under devolved arrangements. The prospectus is being prepared by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, and the South and West Yorkshire city regions – the three lead partners in the plan to devolve the management of local rail services in the North of England.  The document will propose the establishment of a leaders’ committee on which...

New transport governance arrangements could be set up in the Solent area of the South Coast, with Portsmouth City Council floating the idea of an Integrated Transport Authority. Transport responsibilities in the area are currently shared between Transport for South Hampshire (TfSH) and its four constituent transport authorities: the unitaries of Portsmouth, Southampton and Isle of Wight, plus Hampshire County Council. The four authorities and the Solent Local Enterprise Partnership have...

The DfT is asking local transport bodies to publish business cases for major schemes and to commit to only approving schemes that offer a “high” value for money. The guidance on local assurance frameworks does not, however, refer to the need for the DfT to routinely look at or assess business cases as the Association of Directors of Environment, economy, Planning and Transport (ADEPT) feared. ADEPT president Miles Butler had urged against "a situation where...