LCCA Implementation Plan Consultation Response

North Yorkshire Council (NYC) welcomes the Lancashire Combined County Authority (LCCA) Local Transport Plan (LTP) Implementation Plan 2026–2030 and recognises that it provides a clear short-term delivery framework for the wider Local Transport Plan, structured around connectivity, travel choice, safer communities and future-ready networks. The Plan is supported by a substantial evidence base, including the Integrated Sustainability Appraisal (ISA) and Habitats Regulations Assessment (HRA), which together show that LCCA has considered economic, social and environmental effects at plan stage rather than treating these matters as an afterthought. The ISA concludes that the programme is strongly positive overall for economic growth, health and wellbeing, equality of opportunity and, to a lesser extent, rural connectivity, while the HRA confirms that schemes with unresolved ecological risks are being held back behind further project-level assessment rather than assumed to be acceptable in principle.

The overall direction of the Plan is broadly aligned with NYC policy. North Yorkshire Council’s Council Plan, is centred on supporting thriving places and empowered communities, developing more sustainable and connected places, ensuring that residents are safe, healthy and living well, and maximising the potential of people and communities. The emerging North Yorkshire Local Plan is being prepared around issues including sustainable growth, climate change and flood risk, healthy and sustainable communities, natural environment resilience, sustainable transport and accessibility, and infrastructure to support growth.

The current North Yorkshire Local Transport Plan also provides a relevant benchmark, as it is built around economic growth, road safety, access to services, environment and climate change, and healthier travel, with a strong commitment to managing and maintaining existing assets while improving networks where that adds clear value. It explicitly identifies the importance of east–west connectivity, including the A59 corridor towards Lancashire, alongside improved rail links, rural access to services, greater transport resilience and partnership working with neighbouring authorities. On that basis, Lancashire’s Implementation Plan is well aligned where it promotes integrated, lower-carbon and accessible journey-making. There is a clear opportunity for North Yorkshire residents to benefit most where key cross-boundary schemes are developed collaboratively with neighbouring authorities and with neighbouring users and communities in mind from the outset.

This point is reinforced by the emerging York and North Yorkshire Local Transport Plan being prepared by the Combined Authority. Building on the recently approved Strategic Transport Framework, the emerging plan is intended to shape future investment around healthier travel, accessibility for everyone, enhanced safety, environmental protection and support for economic growth, with a clear emphasis on integrated public transport, improved ticketing and information, better rail connectivity, and safer walking, wheeling and cycling. From a North Yorkshire perspective, the Lancashire Implementation Plan would therefore be strengthened by clearer recognition of how key cross-boundary corridors and schemes will align with this emerging regional approach, particularly where future travel demand, service integration and strategic investment priorities will increasingly be considered at the York and North Yorkshire geography rather than solely within historic county boundaries.

While the Plan is welcomed in principle, there are several areas that, in our view, would benefit from a strengthened narrative. First, the Plan is understandably framed around Lancashire’s own growth sectors, settlements and internal priorities, but it gives relatively limited explicit reference to the specific needs of cross-boundary users. This means that journeys between Lancashire and North Yorkshire (for work, education, healthcare, leisure and rail interchange) can appear incidental to scheme development rather than fundamental to it. That is significant because in NYCs LTP4, and in the draft YNYCA LTP it is emphasised that transport journeys are not constrained by administrative boundaries and should be planned accordingly.

Second, although the Plan does help rural areas, the ISA says those benefits are likely to be smaller than the Plan’s stronger benefits for economic growth, health and equality.  This is because many of the main schemes are focused on Lancashire’s larger towns, growth sites and main transport corridors, while rural improvements are fewer and are often still only ideas or future strategies rather than firm delivery proposals.  For North Yorkshire residents, this matters because many people in places like Skipton and nearby rural areas rely on longer-distance and cross-boundary journeys to get to work, school, healthcare and rail connections.  In simple terms, the Plan may bring the biggest and quickest benefits to Lancashire’s urban areas, while rural communities and cross-boundary users may only see smaller or slower improvements unless rural and inter-urban connections are given more attention as schemes develop

Third, some of the schemes that matter most to North Yorkshire are still at too early a stage to give any real confidence on timing, scope or likely outcomes. The clearest example is the Colne–Skipton line reinstatement, which the Lancashire Plan identifies only at feasibility stage and beyond the current implementation period.  The ISA highlights that this type of rail investment could bring significant benefits for the economy, accessibility, equality and carbon reduction, but it also identifies uncertainty around biodiversity, landscape, heritage, soils and water impacts.  The HRA does not rule the scheme through or out on its merits at this stage; rather, it is screened out because it sits outside the current plan period and would need to be considered in more detail later.  For North Yorkshire residents, this means there is a risk that expectations build around an important east–west rail link without any clear indication of when it might be delivered, what level of service it would provide, or what its wider land-use and environmental effects might be.

A similar issue arises on the A59 Safer Road Corridor. The scheme is welcome in principle and the HRA indicates that, at plan level, it is screened out because works are assumed to remain within the existing highway boundary and not materially increase capacity, traffic flows or land take. That provides reassurance from a habitats perspective. However, from a North Yorkshire user perspective, the current description suggests a relatively limited safety-focused package rather than a fuller corridor strategy. The A59 is identified within North Yorkshire policy as a priority east–west route for connectivity and resilience, and North Yorkshire residents would benefit most from a coordinated approach to safety, reliability, active travel provision, speed management and wider corridor performance across the whole route, rather than separate interventions on either side of the boundary.

There is also a wider strategic concern in relation to the balance of the programme. The ISA makes clear that the highest environmental and sustainability risks arise from strategic highway schemes, growth-enabling access packages and some of the larger early-stage infrastructure proposals. Although the Plan’s environmental impacts are considered manageable with mitigation, monitoring and adaptive design, some residual uncertainties remain for biodiversity, landscape, cultural heritage, soils and the water environment. This matters to North Yorkshire because shared landscapes, catchments and ecological networks do not follow local authority boundaries. From our perspective, there is therefore a risk that the wider sub-regional implications of corridor growth and traffic redistribution are not yet fully visible at plan stage, particularly where the strongest direct benefits of the programme are concentrated in Lancashire’s own urban and growth areas.

Taken together, these points do not outweigh the Plan’s strengths, but they do qualify the extent to which its benefits can presently be assumed for North Yorkshire residents. NYC support the implementation plan in principle, but with a clear expectation that cross-boundary integration is strengthened as schemes progress. In practical terms, this means early and sustained engagement with North Yorkshire Council and the York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority on the development of the Colne–Skipton corridor; closer corridor-based coordination on the A59; stronger recognition of rural and inter-urban travel needs; and continued alignment between Lancashire’s scheme development, North Yorkshire’s LTP and emerging Local Plan, North Yorkshire Council’s wider place and wellbeing objectives, and the Combined Authority’s future regional transport plan. Subject to that ongoing collaboration, the Lancashire programme has the potential to make a valuable contribution to a more connected, sustainable and resilient transport network across both counties.