Arup brought together representatives from Local and Combined Authorities, STBs, National Infrastructure (Road, Air and Sea), Public Finance institutions and Professional Bodies to explore the future of devolution and the critical role STBs can play as convenor, in a time of high uncertainty and increasing pressures.

While it was hard to disagree with the complexity of the common challenges across the Transport sector, it was clear throughout the roundtable discussion that there were many great examples of success brought to fruition through cross-agency collaboration.

Calls for accelerated devolution, business cases which focus more on real community benefits, improving the consistency in Combined Authority and STB structures and funding allocations and greater long-term planning echoed throughout the conversation.

Summarised below are four of the key themes which outline the challenges ahead and the successes already underway which will pave the way for the future.

STBs and Combined Authorities are key to reconnecting with our communities through place-based approaches

Devolution provides the opportunity to take a place-based approach to infrastructure projects, with local authorities given the power and funding to deliver the projects most appropriate for their population. A fundamental shift in the paradigm to address inequalities across the regions is needed – as authorities grounded in their communities, STBs could be at the heart of delivering this.

It was remarked that often policy makers, politicians and decision makers are too focused on promoting '‘new’' schemes, which can be at the detriment of maintaining and upgrading existing facilities.

One participant commented “We tend to forget about people who live in smaller catchment areas in our transport schemes”, “…there's neglect in new infrastructure as well as maintenance such as poor road and footpath conditions”.

Perhaps this is because incremental improvements don’t make national headlines (although infrastructure failures certainly do!). However, for the communities using this infrastructure day-to-day, these improvements can greatly improve their quality of life. In most circumstances, regions not only need to provide for their residents, but also for workers, visitors and those passing through.

Levelling-up of funding and defining a consistent role for STBs and Combined Authorities needs to happen at the pace of the fastest, not the slowest

The ever-changing nature of devolution is creating a divergence between STBs and Combined Authorities. In some regions, cities are assumed to be 'governing themselves' seemingly separated from the suburbs or rural areas just outside the boundaries. One approach discussed was the creation of a national infrastructure plan linking STBs to delivery and ensuring they don't work in isolation.

Exploring the issue further there was an agreed understanding that we need to be mindful that STBs are not democratically accountable bodies without elected leaders. Therefore, the group consider that the role of STBs should be focused on pulling different authorities and organisations together, supporting and streamlining collaboration and decision making.

The agreement from around the table was that greatest successes seen so far have come from consortiums brought together by the STBs. This role as convenor provides the critical missing link of integration between national organisations and local delivery, improving the long-term management of projects and contracts.

However, it was noted, that there are inconsistencies between each STB in terms of the level of resources, capacity, and area of focus. A rebalancing of power and access to finance may be needed, but as one participant commented, this needs to happen at the pace of the fastest, not the slowest; we need to bring everyone up to speed, as opposed to hold others back.

The lack of consistency doesn’t just effect collaboration and the ability to lobby for change. The divergence increases the complexity of evaluating how funding should be allocated. The inherent risk being a self-fulfilling prophecy; the best-funded and best-organised authorities will be prioritised the most.

This should not be a call to ‘rearrange the deck chairs’ which is to say defund some organisations in favour of others. There needs to be a levelling up of funding across the organisations.

Collectively we need to build business cases around what we want to change, not what is easiest to measure.

As an industry we've become good at measuring costs, but not good enough at capturing benefits. It wouldn’t be too farfetched to claim this is a result of business cases not placing sufficient value on factors reflecting what people and communities value most.

The consensus around the table was that you don’t necessarily always want maximum economic outputs from a scheme, however, if you can't monetise the benefits it's difficult to present a robust business case. This begins to present itself in broader issues too, for example, how do we tackle challenges like climate change if we can't present a robust enough case?

Perhaps there needs to be a greater shift towards evaluating business cases based on what the scheme is going to do with measures beyond improving journey times. It would be about building business cases around what we want to change, not what is easiest to measure.

There was also a challenge raised around how can we deliver sustainable mode shift if the expectation is that public transport schemes pay for themselves. This is particularly evident on schemes in rural communities – our model of economic growth has been built around urbanisation and dense populations. This makes it difficult to break car dependencies as the population, although still large, is more spread out.

It was proposed that greater fiscal devolution for local and combined authorities could decrease the limitations in economic-based business cases while also increasing their ability to raise money for themselves and invest into transport schemes which truly improve the lives of their communities.

Now is the time for brave leadership and longer term planning

In times of uncertainty, the need for bold leadership becomes ever more paramount. A willingness to step away from traditional approaches, and popular interventions is key to securing long term change.

Creating better stability in the existing policy landscape is something which the participants around the table all agreed on. The fluctuations in approaches, priorities and funding often fuelled by the ‘hot topic’ of the moment, causes a significant amount of wasted resources, time and inefficiencies.

Examples were given from outside of the UK, where infrastructure planning is set for 25-to-40-year time scales therefore setting a long-term vision for all to buy-into. A national infrastructure strategy established in decades, assigned to the STBs as the apolitical bodies capable of facilitating delivery.

It will be no surprise that the imminent general election is causing a higher-than-normal level of uncertainty. One participant suggested that creating an 18-month fix before and after an election, agreed on by all parties, could greatly reduce the impact of electoral uncertainty.

Closing thoughts

There was a collective sense of achievement and recognition of the progress made so far. With the challenges raised being a testament to the continued ambition for an ever greater speed of change.

We all bear a shared responsibility for continuing these conversations beyond the confines of conferences. Ensuring we continue to elevate the voices of the most disempowered within our communities and to generate support from the general public.

Collaboration, after all, is key to driving the behaviour change we all want to see. To deliver better resilience in our transport systems, equitable decarbonisation and improved connectivity across the whole of the UK.

We would like to thank all of our roundtable attendees for a fantastic discussion.

If you would like to continue the conversation, or discuss any of these topics in more detail, please email: DecarbonisingTransport@arup.com or visit Arup.com to see our latest publications, insights and more.