Recommendation 9

The Department for Transport must do more to provide transparency on its approach to assessment and decision making. Specifically, it should: • publish the National Transport Model so that it can be independently tested and verified, or model and report on a wider range of scenarios where traffic levels on the SRN are a) reduced and b) maintained at current levels and ambition for rail patronage is increased, as we recommended in our report on strategic road investment; • publish its own estimated congestion forecasts for the Strategic Road Network; • be more transparent in the decision-making process for potential alternatives to NSIP scheme choices, for example at Project Control Framework stages 0 and 1 for road schemes. • provide a list of “exceptional circumstances” which would necessitate consideration of alternative schemes during the Development Consent Order examination process; and • provide examples of how the draft revised NNNPS supports a move away from the ‘predict and provide’ approach to developing NSIPs.