Frequently Asked Questions

A Local Transport Plan is a requirement for Local Transport Authorities, such as Kent County Council, 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. It is available to view here. 

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 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. 

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

Our Local Transport Plan concerns county-wide transport challenges and proposals, and new transport infrastructure investment across different places in the county. Those proposals are under development and will be in the full Local Transport Plan. The Local Transport Plan will not be proposing detailed changes to any bus or rail services. But the proposals we make in the Plan may be planned to enable new services or improved services to occur in the future if the funding we need to deliver new infrastructure to enable that can be found.

We do not yet know how much funding we will need to deliver our full Local Transport Plan. We are still developing the proposals for new transport infrastructure investment across the county. As we do that, we will consider the potential cost of those proposals and set out in our full Local Transport Plan what funding that would require. 

Yes. The current consultation is on our Emerging Local Transport Plan. It is not yet complete as we need to take into consideration your responses and then develop the proposals for new transport infrastructure investment. We plan to complete that next year and consult on the full Local Transport Plan.

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 its consultations.

District Council’s do not have a statutory requirement upon them 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 Council’s 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 Council’s also establish their Transport Strategies in order to make it clear to Kent County Council was 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.