The Government has asked each Council across the country to create a Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan (LCWIP). This is an important document as it shows what the Council wish to achieve relating to Active Travel for the next 15 years.
For our area, the Councils for Derby City, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire have worked together (under the banner of the Local Enterprise Partnership – D2N2 LEP) to create a single plan for the region.
As the Derwent Valley Trust we’re pleased to see the Plan progressing and support the goals of defining a long term plan for a well connected cycle network.
The LEP is now asking for feedback on the draft plan (deadline of 8th March 2023) – the LCWIP plan, supporting documents and maps, and the method of providing feedback can be found at https://lcwipeastmids.consultation.ai/ We’d encourage readers to submit their feedback on the benefits of the Plan together with any specific comments you may have.
The Derwent Valley Trust has submitted feedback as an organisation on the cycling aspects of the plan. The main points of this feedback are:
- The need for the routes crossing between local authority boundaries to be considered as strategic routes from end to end and not be downgraded when passing from one authority’s area to another. In particular the portions of the Derwent Valley Cycleway in Derby City need to be shown as strategic routes to reflect their status in Derbyshire.
- The method of assessing routes for commuting is based around an urban area and does not accurately reflect the demand for use of a cycleway within a geographically constrained corridor. The consideration of only commuting demand within 200 metres of a proposed route needs to be reconsidered to cater for commuting from a less urban area. In particular, the Derwent Valley Cycleway between Belper and Derby would provide benefits to all residents within the Derwent Valley including those over 200m from the route.
- The time taken to complete the LCWIP (since work started in 2017) means that a review of the current plan is well overdue and work should begin now on version 2 of the LCWIP. The Derwent Valley Trust should be included as a key stakeholder in any work towards creating the next version of the Plan.
- The analysis should include the available school travel data when assessing demand for any route.
- The prioritisation process for Derbyshire routes reflects the process used for the Derbyshire Key Cycle Network. This assessed routes under an “environmental” heading and which penalised routes that are proposed to run through areas of particular natural or heritage value (e.g. nature reserves, heritage sites). While dealing with nature or heritage requirements may make the route harder to deliver, the benefits of the route are greatly increased by providing access to the special sites and this should be reflected by boosting rather than penalising the environmental rating (and its equivalent within the LCWIP process).
- While the Derwent Valley Mills UNESCO World Heritage Site is acknowledged in the LCWIP, a greater degree of importance of the Site should be reflected in the analysis. The Site is one of only 20 World Heritage Sites in England, and the only one in the East Midlands, and there is a massive opportunity to use the LCWIP plans to allow tourism and other benefits of the Site to be accrued.
