Skip to main content

UK government plans to cut motorway red tape

The UK government has launched a six-week consultation in an effort to help reduce barriers around unnecessary regulations on England’s motorways and major A roads. It is hoped that the new Highways Agency (HA) developments will remove bureaucracy while putting more power in the hands of local communities and their representatives. The planned changes place greater emphasis on its role to promote economic growth and enable development. Key changes proposed include: easing restrictions for developers on new
February 13, 2013 Read time: 2 mins
The UK government has launched a six-week consultation in an effort to help reduce barriers around unnecessary regulations on England’s motorways and major A roads.

It is hoped that the new 503 Highways Agency (HA) developments will remove bureaucracy while putting more power in the hands of local communities and their representatives.

The planned changes place greater emphasis on its role to promote economic growth and enable development. Key changes proposed include: easing restrictions for developers on new access roads and junctions on motorways; removing requirements for developers to fund mitigation measures unless the impacts of their proposals are severe; simplifying the requirements for service areas; protecting the essential safety and comfort of motorists, while leaving other issues to be decided by local planning and market forces; removing minimum spacing restrictions for service areas, to create greater competition and customer choice.

Announcing the consultation, Roads Minister Stephen Hammond said, “We want to encourage economic growth, while reducing bureaucracy for businesses and local communities.  I hope that local authorities and private developers will take the time to give us their views on our proposals for cutting unnecessary red tape and make planning decisions easier and quicker for all involved.”

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Bronx benefits from mesoscopic-microscopic modelling
    January 7, 2014
    Michael Marsico, Andrew Weeks, Keir Opie and Murat Ayçin explain the application of hybrid traffic simulation to a planning study in New York City. Traffic modelling, particularly mesoscopic-microscopic hybrid simulation, has played a key role in planning for the future of one of America's shortest interstates, the 1.3-mile Sheridan Expressway. New York City has just completed a two-year, interagency study federally funded by a TIGER II grant on how to improve the Sheridan Expressway and its surroundi
  • Report highlights community impact of new mobility options
    March 29, 2018
    Local authorities and communities must understand the impacts of the new mobility options and regulate to get the transport systems they want, according to a new report. Colin Sowman takes a look. Outside of the big cities plagued with congestion, the existing transportation system(s) often cope adequately, and the ongoing workload (maintenance, safety…) is more than enough to keep local transport authorities busy. Is it, therefore, a good use of public service employees’ time to keep abreast of the raft
  • NOCoE delivers data for diligent DOTs
    April 29, 2015
    David Crawford talks to Dennis Motiani about the role of the new National Operations Centre of Excellence. Consolidating the collective experience of the US transportation system’s management and operations (TSM&O) community, streamlining its information gathering, while cutting research times and costs are the key drivers behind the country’s new National Operations Centre of Excellence (NOCoE). Launched in January at the annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board (TRB), this sets out to be a sin
  • £36bn from scrapped HS2 to be spent on 'transport projects' in England
    October 4, 2023
    Money from scaled-back high-speed rail project will be reallocated, insists Rishi Sunak