The 1990s paradigm shift - Transport Policy and Planning in Great Britain - page 111

It is not the Government's job to tell people where and how to travel. But if
people continue to exercise their choices as they are at present and there are no
other significant changes, the resulting traffic growth would have unacceptable
consequences for both the environment and the economy of certain parts of
the country and could be very difficult to reconcile with overall sustainable
development goals. The Government will need to provide a framework in which
people can exercise their transport choice in ways which are compatible with
environmental goals.
(ibid. para 26.17)
By coincidence the environmental case for raising motoring costs was being made
just at the time the Government badly needed to increase tax revenues to bridge a
widening budget deficit. In the 1993 Budget the Chancellor of the Exchequer Kenneth
Clarke took the opportunity to increase the duty on petrol by 10% and to make a
further commitment to increase it each year thereafter until 2000 by at least 3% in
real terms (the so-called 'fuel duty escalator'). How far environmental objectives
actually prompted this initiative is a very moot point. Significantly, progress with other
fiscal instruments recommended by the Royal Commission, but which did not carry
equivalent attractions of revenue gain for the Treasury (e.g. changes in the structure of
annual vehicle licence fees and in company car taxation) was noticeably more sluggish.
The concept of sustainable development rapidly acquired hegemonic status. In
professional circles almost every policy or proposal had to be explained or justified by
reference to 'sustainability' - a mixed blessing since the term quickly became devalued.
Nevertheless by the mid-1990s it seemed as though convergence was taking place
around a new and quite distinctive set of transport and planning policies framed within
the context of sustainable development - policies which, given time, would translate
into a very different era of planning practice.
7.5 PPG13 - 'Reducing the need to travel'
Land use policy in relation to transport was another important area in which
the Government had begun to introduce radical changes of the kind urged by the
Royal Commission. In this case however there was reason to believe there was more
genuine support for sustainable development. The Department of the Environment
(responsible for land use planning) had previously distanced itself from the Department
of Transport when the latter had published its Roads for Prosperity and John Gummer
(Secretary of State at the DOE at the time of the Sustainable Development Strategy)
had an unusual personal commitment to the subject.
Following the 1990 Common Inheritance White Paper the Government announced
that it would be reviewing all the national planning policy guidance notes (PPGs) to
ensure that land use planning contributed to the goal of sustainable development.
Preparatory to the review of PPG13 on Transport, the Government commissioned
research to identify the ways in which land use planning could contribute to a
reduction in transport emissions (ECOTEC 1993) . On the basis of this work a revised
PPG13 was published in 1994 (DOE and DTp 1994).
Unusually - and a sign perhaps of some 'thawing' in relations between the two
departments - the research and the PPG were published under the auspices of both
the DOE and the DTp. In truth however comparatively little in the way of policy
adjustment was being asked of the DTp - PPG13 was pre-eminently local and urban