Member

Amendment 120F addresses a practical problem in the Bill: how local transport plans are agreed and how we ensure that they stay up to date. As drafted, the Bill requires unanimous agreement from all constituent authorities in non-mayoral areas before a local transport plan can be adopted. That may sound like a safeguard, but in reality it risks becoming a recipe for delay and deadlock. If a single authority can block agreement, the danger is that no plan is adopted at all. This amendment takes a different and more constructive approach. It would remove the requirement for unanimity and instead place a clear duty on local transport authorities to keep their local transport plans under review and to amend them at least every five years. That strikes me as a far more sensible way forward. It would encourage authorities to get a plan in place, knowing that it can be revisited and improved, rather than holding out indefinitely for a level of consensus that may never come.