Design Review Panels

Active Travel England (ATE) has produced guidance about Design Review Panels for Strategic Authorities.

Strategic Authorities are combined authorities like York & North Yorkshire CA. They may set up Design Review Panels (DRPs) to ensure that designs for their active travel infrastructure projects are in line with national guidance.

ATE aims to work with Strategic Authorities to help them build capability, plan strong pipelines of projects, and deliver their local walking, wheeling and cycling priorities.

In support of these aims, ATE offers to support the establishment of Strategic Authority-owned DRPs, and participate in them.

ATE has a centralised knowledge base gathered across the country, and can share that knowledge with Strategic Authorities.

As well as DRPs, ATE offers Strategic Authorities and Local Authorities Design Surgeries. They are short, informal workshops to discuss active travel scheme design issues.

Setting up a DRP

ATE can help Strategic Authorities set up DRPs by:

• providing in-person training
• supplying template terms of reference and
• giving general support and advice

The guidance says that the following people should attend a DRP:

• a Chair and a Secretary
• an ATE inspector
• the programme sponsor (often from the Strategic Authority)
• the scheme project manager (often from the Local Authority)
• the scheme designer (Local Authority officer)

ATE’s role is to offer advice based on the application of scheme review tools, but it is the Chair of the DRP who makes decision.

‘The Chair and Strategic Authority may choose to follow, or not follow [ATE’s] advice, and ATE and their representatives at DRPs are not decision-makers and carry no responsibility for the design itself’.

This abdication of responsibility by ATE is quite surprising; it is a major reason why ATE’s input has had so little effect in North Yorkshire so far. ATE identifies Critical Safety Issues, then North Yorkshire Council ignores its advice and refuses to resolve them.

The guidance includes the West of England CA’s Terms of Reference as an example. It shows these possible decisions by a DRP:

• E – Endorsed
• EC – Endorsed with Conditions
• NE – Not Endorsed
• NR – Not Ready for Endorsement

Operating a DRP

The Strategic Authority controls the DRP process and sets the agenda. It is responsible for pipeline planning.

The guidance sets out the detailed information which should be shared by the Strategic Authority before a DRP – for example, plans and drawings, pedestrian and cycle counts, and completed scheme reviews using ATE tools.

A DRP may cover more than one scheme.

There is a standard template DRP report. The guidance notes:

‘Where there is no plan to resolve Critical Safety Issues, following inspection of the completed scheme the Critical Safety Issue will be confirmed as a record of non-compliance’.

A further DRP should be held if the designs change significantly. If the funding is provided by ATE, a change control process may then be triggered.

Testimonial

West Yorkshire Combined Authority says:

‘ATE is a highly-valued design assurance partner of WYCA, sitting on their established design Quality Panel Board.

ATE provides ad hoc design guidance on proposed schemes which face challenges around deliverability and full compliance to national design guidance from key documents such as LTN 1/20.

Their early input was instrumental in shaping the Quality Panel process in its inception and in its ongoing evolution as additional national design standards have been adopted’.