Worcestershire County Council LTP4 Consultation Report Autumn 2017 Contents 1. Background 5 2. The Consultation Process 6 3. Summary 8 4. Recommendations 12 5. Methodology 13 6. Results 19 3 List of Appendices Appendix A Consultation Plan 4 1. BackgroundBackground 1.1 As the duration of Worcestershire County Council's current LTP3 period is long term (up to and including 2026), it was planned to review intermittently and refresh both the policy documents and the Plan to ensure that they remained up to date. Since the LTP3 was put together, funding mechanisms, socio-economic aspirations and the level of evidence available to support investment in schemes has now changed and many schemes included in the LTP3 have now been delivered or developed since their conception. Hence, the LTP3 has been revised into a draft LTP4, to take account of these major changes. 1.2 The current LTP3 is made up of a series of detailed policy documents and an overall strategy or plan which includes projects and/or schemes for proposed delivery. These were refreshed for the consultation as follows: Policy documents: These were reviewed, reduced in size, combined and redrafted as a more manageable, digitally compatible web resource. Any new policies were also included; Main LTP document: This was revised to include any new schemes, removing any schemes that have been implemented since LTP3 adoption. To also reflect the Infrastructure Development Plans (IDP) within the county as well as considering, more 'aspirational' schemes that may have been suggested by key stakeholders during the pre-consultation. 1.3 The consultation on LTP4 was split into two key phases: Pre-consultation: the Transport Strategy Team sought to consult with Worcestershire County Councillors and District councillors to help identify any potentially viable scheme concepts that are not currently included within the LTP3. This was undertaken to help develop a draft LTP4; The public consultation: To consult on the refreshed policies AND the updated strategy plan which will include an updated set of proposed schemes by District and Urban area. This may include a number of schemes resulting from the pre- consultation. 1.4 This report covers the second phase of the consultation only. The sections within this report can be broken down as follows: Section 2 sets out the consultation process; Section 3 summarises the outcomes of the exercise; Section 4 contains the recommendations of this report; Section 5 covers the Methodology; Section 6 details the results of the exercise; Finally, a number of Appendices are included, which provide relevant background information. 5 2. TheThe Consultation Consultation Process Process 2.1 Worcestershire County Council has a duty to consult as part of its Best Value Duty pursuant to the Local Government Act 1999 and would therefore consider it appropriate to consult on its Local Transport Plan. The Act States: 'A best value authority must make arrangements to secure continuous improvement in the way in which its functions are exercised, having regard to a combination of economy, efficiency and effectiveness. For the purpose of deciding how to fulfil the duty an authority must consult: representatives of persons liable to pay any tax, precept or levy to or in respect of the authority; representatives of persons liable to pay non-domestic rates in respect of any area within which the authority carries out functions; representatives of persons who use or are likely to use services provided by the authority; and representatives of persons appearing to the authority to have an interest in any area within which the authority carries out functions. 2.2 The Transport Act 2000 also places a duty on local transport authorities, when formulating policies and plans, to consult key stakeholders. 2.3 A further duty to involve, introduced in the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007, requires local authorities and passenger transport authorities to involve citizens in local decision making and service provision. 2.4 Worcestershire County Council has considered these and other duties in determining the detail of how to develop and consult on the LTP4 Compendium, thus ensuring that local representatives have been given genuine opportunities to influence decisions. 2.5 The consultation process for the draft Local Transport Plan 4 Compendium place took over a 12-week period following a Cabinet decision taken on 15th December, 2016. It sought to embrace a number of methods to obtain feedback on the proposals from the public and stakeholders. The consultation ran from December 22nd, 2016 until March 17th, 2017. 2.6 The governance applied during this consultation exercise included: That the consultation took place prior to any decision making in relation to the proposal; That regular result updates were provided throughout the consultation period to the Project Team to enable on-going consideration; That timelines were adhered to; That there had been a robust stakeholder engagement and that other Directorates were involved to ensure the consultation had good exposure; That there had been a robust process of face to face consultation; That senior officers had made an extensive time commitment to the consultation; Ensuring that good organisation and record keeping was undertaken; That the consultation process allowed for "self-correction" as issues emerged through its duration; 6 That a good information system was put in place, including a website; Ensuring that an Equality Impact Assessment was built in to project/programme planning; Ensuring that any significant adverse impacts were considered and actions drawn up as appropriate. 2.7 The key outcomes from the consultation process include: Gathering comments from a variety of sources, along with other streams of information to determine how the LTP4 can be modified and improved; To evaluate and respond to this information so that the Strategic Transport Team may make decisions on the LTP4 amendments. 2.8 The purpose of this report is to provide a summary of feedback to participants and to facilitate any amendments to the LTP4 Compendium accordingly in preparation for LTP4 Cabinet adoption during 2017. 7 3. SummarySummary 3.1 The consultation process received a healthy response rate resulting from a number of different methods. A high level summary of the outcomes can be seen in the following paragraphs. Exhibitions 3.2 At the start of the consultation, 11 staffed exhibitions and 11 unstaffed exhibitions took place across Worcestershire. The staffed exhibitions were displayed to over 1,000 people, who were encouraged to participate in the consultation online. Further details can be seen in Section 5.1.13. Presentations 3.3 Six presentation were made to Borough, City and District Council colleagues, with a further 11 presentations being made to other stakeholder groups. These are outlined in Section 5.1.14. All stakeholders were encouraged to submit formal responses and these have been summarised in Section 6.2.35 (written responses). The Questionnaire (quantitative) 3.4 The questionnaire was developed to support both quantitative (direct answers to questions) and qualitative (free text) responses. It was available on the website and in hard copy format. In total 358 completed questionnaires were received. Key headlines from the quantitative questions of the survey include: 52% of respondents were from South Worcestershire in line with the proportion of population (55%), 22% were from North East Worcestershire and 31% from the Wyre Forest; 304 respondents were expressing views on behalf of individuals; There was an over-representation of older men (almost half of respondents were over 60 and almost 60% were men); Almost one quarter of respondents described themselves as having a long term health condition or that they were disabled; 52% of respondents supported the overall schemes being proposed in LTP4; however, around 30% disagreed. The remaining 18% chose not to express a strong opinion; The 'major schemes' did not attract strong support or opposition to the same degree as the schemes overall with 44% remaining neutral; The area strategies received a more defined response: The North East Strategy was opposed by over half of respondents representing the area; The Wyre Forest Strategy was supported by almost three quarters of respondents representing the area; 8 The South Worcestershire Strategy was supported by 56% of respondents representing the area. Over half of respondents considered that there were schemes missing from the LTP4 draft; The LTP4 draft policies did not attract a lot of opposition at either an overall or individual level. Most policies received over 50% support with the exception of Motorcycling (37%) and Public Realm (48%); Around 1/3rd of respondents thought that there were policies missing from the LTP draft. The Questionnaire (qualitative) 3.5 Key headlines from the qualitative (free text) comments from the questionnaire are summarised in the following paragraphs. 3.6 Around three in ten respondents (30%) stated that they 'disagree' or 'strongly disagree' with the overall schemes and respondents had an opportunity to explain why they felt they disagreed. The responses tended to reflect the free text comments received for other answers and a summary is shown in Table 6.1, along with the Worcestershire County Council response. Broad areas of disagreement included: Highways schemes missing; Policies missing; Not enough being done to tackle