I apologise to the House for that. The amendment aims to address the problem of local planning authorities unwittingly, and I think occasionally intentionally,
“frustrating a higher-tier authority’s aspirations for walking, cycling or rights of way networks”.
We must not forget the rights of way, because you cannot walk or cycle if rights of way get blocked. The problem is in not recording those network aspirations in authorities’ own development plans,
“thereby failing to safeguard land for those networks, to connect new development with existing networks and/or to secure developer contributions to implement or upgrade specific routes”.
I will give examples. It is probably worse with two-tier authorities. Where the local transport or highway authority, which is usually a county council or combined authority, is not the same body as the local planning authority, you can have this example, which Sustrans exposed. The alliance says that
“one part of a unitary authority commissioned Sustrans to assess the feasibility of re-opening a disused railway line as a walking and cycling route, yet another part of the same authority then gave permission for a housing development which blocked that disused railway line before Sustrans had completed the study. In another case, planning permission was granted by a local planning authority for development which adversely impacted a section of the National Cycle Network (which Sustrans manages), with planning officers unaware of the existence and importance of this walking, wheeling and cycling route”.
This is confusing for local authorities, especially when they are probably very short of resources, as many noble Lords have said on previous amendments. I think the Government believe that our concerns about lack of co-ordination would best be addressed through the NPPF, but that does not mention it, and it omits other things altogether. Unless we get something here that links granting planning permission with taking account of adequate provision for walking, cycling and rights of way, we are in trouble.
I will give one other example before I conclude. In a recent case in Chesterfield in Derbyshire, the local planning authority considered a housing development close to the town centre and railway station. The council officials pressed for the development to include walking and cycling routes to facilitate access to, from and through the development, and obviously to and from the station. However, when the committee was due to consider the application, the developer made a submission claiming that the walking and cycling routes would render the developments economically unviable, and the councillors accepted that view without really challenging it. I have cycled on many cycle routes that probably suffer from the same failure by a developer to provide a proper, sensible route, because it tried to persuade the planning authority that it would be all right on the night, and it is not always.
I hope that the Government will support this amendment. Active Travel England is involved in this, and I certainly welcome what it is planning to do. However, it will often be consulted only at a later stage, and it would be much better if the relevant authorities’ walking, cycling and rights of way network plans were clearly shown in development plans from the outset.