Vehicle Access Design – Ingress and Egress in Forward Gear

A fair proportion of our project work includes advising on vehicle access design; either revising existing vehicle accesses or the feasibility of creating new vehicle accesses as part of planning applications.

We often advise that having accesses that allow vehicles to enter a site in forward gear, provide space to turn and then exit is good practice and is likely to be viewed favourably by local officers. Depending on the site-specific context (road hierarchy and traffic composition etc. of the adjoining highway) the ability to enter and exit an application site could be essential to the success of a planning application due to impacts on highway safety and the free flow of traffic etc. etc.

Recently the RTPI’s The Planner’s Appeal Round-Up highlighted an appeal case in Bexley where an application for a beauty salon was refused planning permission and had a subsequent appeal dismissed solely on highway grounds for this vehicle ingress / egress design reason.

This case reinforces that, even with The National Planning Policy Framework policy of only preventing or refusing development on transport grounds where the “residual cumulative impacts of development are severe” (DCLG, 2012), access arrangements can be critical to the success of a planning application.

The planer article can be found at http://www.theplanner.co.uk/decision/appeal-beauty-salon-ruled-adverse-to-highway-safety

Contact Kronen if you need advice with regards to revising an existing vehicle access or creating new vehicle accesses as part of a planning application. Kronen Limited Surrey transport planning: info@www.kronenlimited.com, 020 8541 1139 or 16 Church Road, Leatherhead, Surrey, KT22 8AY.