Conclusion 8

There is concern from some interested parties that the National Transport Model, which underpins the Statement of Need, does not consider a wide enough range of traffic demand scenarios and that the National Transport Model and congestion forecasts are not published in ways that permit thorough scrutiny of their assumptions. There is also a lack of faith in the options appraisal process for NSIPs before they reach Development Consent Order stage. Finally, there is concern that, while the Department for Transport talks about moving away from ‘predict and provide’, in reality the NSIP regime perpetuates that approach. For promoters of schemes, opponents and the wider public to have confidence in the robustness of the revised NNNPS, greater transparency is needed.