The Local Transport capital settlement for 2007/08 was announced by the Department for Transport (DfT) on 18th December 2006. Nationally, £3billion has been awarded to local transport authorities for 2007/08.

The people in the North East will benefit from £82million to improve local transport in the region. Tyne and Wear authorities have been allocated:

Tyne and Wear:

• £15.201 million for road maintenance
• £17.031 million for smaller transport improvement schemes See Link and for regional news See Link

The LTP2 document and the Delivery Report 2001-06 were both assessed as being "GOOD" and "VERY GOOD" respectively.

All authorities had their Local Transport Plans 2006-11 (LTP2) scored as "weak", “fair”, “good”, or “excellent”, with only one in the “weak” category.  The Tyne and Wear Local Transport Plan has been assessed as being GOOD. The good classification means that a standard of transport planning equivalent to the end of last year's promising category has been evidenced and the final plan represents a major advance on last year's provisional plan.

Further Details

In addition, all authorities had their Delivery Report for the period 2001-06 assessed as "very good", "good", "fair" or "excellent". In Tyne and Wear the delivery was assessed as being VERY GOOD.

Feedback from Department for Transport and Government Office stated that the Delivery Report "demonstrated strong delivery in a number of strategy areas, and a positive overall impact on the local transport in the area. Your performance puts you in the top half of authorities nationally".

Areas of strength included road safety, public transport and cycling. In particular, the partners were identified as having made good progress towards delivering the national casualty reduction targets, recognition also being given to the fact that partners have achieved most of the stretched targets set for ourselves locally.

DfT stated: "This has been achieved through impressive data-led, partnership working, not only with Plan Partners but also with the private and voluntary sectors, and with significant revenue support from the Plan Partners”.

Further Details

The ratings of the two documents as "Good" and Very Good" have resulted in an increase in the Integrated Transport budget for Tyne and Wear of 3% for the 2007/08 period. In real terms this has resulted in a funding increase of £496,000.

Decisions on new major schemes will be made by DfT in early 2007, once advice has been received from the regions on priorities.

In addition, Tyne and Wear authorities will receive an extra £0.604 million funding towards primary route network maintenance. Gateshead have been allocated £0.126 million for A184 Stoneygate Lane retaining wall works and Sunderland have been allocated £0.478 million for Grange Road, Lily Terrace and Hartburn Bridges major maintenance schemes.

A table showing the categories, scores and allocations for our authorities is attached below. 

Copies of the decision letters to individual authorities are available on the DfT website via the link below. 

Related documents

Settlement Letters