Frequently Asked Questions

A Local Transport Plan is a requirement for Local Transport Authorities, such as KCC, under the Local Transport Act 2000 (as amended in 2008). The Act says each Local Transport Authority must develop policies for the promotion and encouragement of safe, integrated, efficient and economic transport to, from and within their area. We must carry out our work to implement the policies our Plan has.

Yes, we do. It is called Local Transport Plan 4 Delivering Growth without Gridlock (2016 to 2031). It is available to view from our website.

We think a lot has changed since we adopted our last Local Transport Plan. The government thinks so too and provided us with some funding to develop a new plan to provide to them during 2024. More details about what has changed are set out in our new draft Local Transport Plan.

We are considering how Kent’s transport network will need to change long into the future because we have some understanding of how Kent’s population may grow up to around 2040, as well as national targets to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from transport by 2050. How long our new Local Transport Plan lasts for will depend on what else changes between now and those time horizons, as well as the success we have in delivering the new Plan’s proposals for improving transport in Kent.

Our Local Transport Plan concerns county-wide transport challenges and proposals, and new transport infrastructure investment across different places in the county. These proposals are now in the full draft Local Transport Plan. The new Plan does not propose detailed changes to bus or rail services. But the proposals we make in the Plan may enable new services or improved services to occur in the future if the funding we need to deliver new infrastructure can be found. More information about the plans KCC has for the bus system are in our published Bus Service Improvement Plan which is available on our website.

We have set out in our Local Transport Plan a section on the cost of the proposals and the funding they would require. Not all proposals are the responsibility of KCC to deliver – for example investment in the motorway and trunk road network will be the responsibility of National Highways. For the proposals that we would be responsible for, we have estimated that over the next 12 years we would need funding from the government of between £2.6 to £3.1 billion.

The funding we will need for our Local Transport Plan is too high a value for our Council to find. We have made clear in our Local Transport Plan that the funding will need to come from government. We will work with government and other authorities and organisations to find other sources of funding to contribute to the cost of proposals. For example where new development will benefit from the access and capacity that proposals provide we would expect them to contribute. However, we know that on the whole those other sources are not going to be sufficient on their own and can be less certain than the funding the government can commit.

This is our second consultation on our Local Transport Plan 5. Following our consideration of the feedback we receive we will further develop our plan and decide whether to adopt it as final or whether we need to undertake any further work including further consultation.

All Kent County Councillors will hold a vote on whether to adopt the full Local Transport Plan once they are content that it has been completed following this consultation. Once adopted, any proposals we are able to progress to delivery may be subject to further decisions by the Cabinet Member for Highways and Transport based upon the terms of our Council Constitution, which is available to view on our website.

District and Borough Councils do not have a statutory requirement (that is a requirement in national legislation) to have a Local Transport Plan as they are not the Local Transport Authority. District Councils do, however, establish spatial development plans, called Local Plans. Local Plans are a statutory requirement for them, and they set out policies and proposals for how land uses could change in their Districts. As part of those District and Borough Councils often assess the impact of changes to land uses on the transport network and set out their desired change to the transport network within a District Transport Strategy. District and Borough Councils also establish their Transport Strategies to make it clear to KCC what their preferences are for how transport should change in their areas. We take the Districts’ Transport Strategies into account as we develop our Local Transport Plan.