"Visibility Splays" as part of planning permission...
Discussion
Flat-6 said:
I think its going to be do-able without any road alterations, its just a bit of give-n-take I think.
You've already stated how you cannot comply with the regs. Moving trees and hedgelines will help but you still won't comply. You need to apply for a 'departure from standard' and professional help (swerv??) to produce a strong arguement both technically and emotionally (community scheme, keep the country healthy etc.) Your highways eng, when you have one, will tell you whether you have any chance before you go through all of this.Flat-6 said:
IF it is turned down on this, I will take it up with them that it wasn't mentioned during pre-application.
Put bluntly, that won't help you.If the application is turned down, your main recourse is appeal, and an Appeals Inspector will only be interested in the material apects of the application proposal itself.
BlueG33 is right that it's strictly a Highways matter, but it is such a basic and obvious thing that I'd still have expected a competent Planning Officer to comment upon it. But you've no real comeback against them, regardless.
Flat-6 said:
This angle suggests that if it comes to it, those 2 overgrown trees could come down.
The land owner owns both fields (and another few thousand acres)
Basically it's his problem (I am in contact) now as the lease agreement is based on getting planning approval.
They don't look like trees to me, call them weeds and remove them!The land owner owns both fields (and another few thousand acres)
Basically it's his problem (I am in contact) now as the lease agreement is based on getting planning approval.
I was out last night chap, so I'll take a look at this today at some point for you. Possibly lunchtime.
Needless to say, a case can be made for a setback of 2.4m and there are plenty of appeal decisions which support this setback distance. It's not arbitrary btw - it's the calculated setback of the driver's eye if the front of the vehicle is at the 'stopline'. 4.5m is a DMRB standard largely relaxed now as it's based on a driver behind a car waiting at the stopline being able to see along the road as well. It essentially helps with junction capacity as it allows the following driver enough visi to not have to roll to the stopline.
That said, I've dealt with some difficult and hard of thinking officers in the not too distant past that simply cannot get their heads around that and we've had to relent in order to secure permission.
You can also argue the case for a lower visibility i.e. less than 215m in this case. However, you need to back up any such case with evidence of prevailing speeds on a road i.e. by getting a speed survey undertaken.
No applications for a departure from standard are required - departures are only required when dealing with trunk roads.
Needless to say, a case can be made for a setback of 2.4m and there are plenty of appeal decisions which support this setback distance. It's not arbitrary btw - it's the calculated setback of the driver's eye if the front of the vehicle is at the 'stopline'. 4.5m is a DMRB standard largely relaxed now as it's based on a driver behind a car waiting at the stopline being able to see along the road as well. It essentially helps with junction capacity as it allows the following driver enough visi to not have to roll to the stopline.
That said, I've dealt with some difficult and hard of thinking officers in the not too distant past that simply cannot get their heads around that and we've had to relent in order to secure permission.
You can also argue the case for a lower visibility i.e. less than 215m in this case. However, you need to back up any such case with evidence of prevailing speeds on a road i.e. by getting a speed survey undertaken.
No applications for a departure from standard are required - departures are only required when dealing with trunk roads.
Thanks Mervin :-)
I'm glad to hear there is some hope, All seemed doom and gloom last night...!!
OK that makes sense, I assume the 4.5m "Commercial" offset was more designed for places such as supermarkets and trading estates etc...
I'm currently in contact with the council and land owner so im sure we can all come to a satisfactory and above all SAFE agreement.
I'm glad to hear there is some hope, All seemed doom and gloom last night...!!
OK that makes sense, I assume the 4.5m "Commercial" offset was more designed for places such as supermarkets and trading estates etc...
I'm currently in contact with the council and land owner so im sure we can all come to a satisfactory and above all SAFE agreement.
No the 4.5m was a standard requirement for all junctions. In fact, if you look at the DMRB, 9m is technically the full standard and 4.5m is a relaxation, with 2.4m a further relaxation.
Manual for Streets, as referenced by Equus, blew the established requirements out of the water as it identified that providing too much visibility could actually be a bad thing for safety. It's taken many Appeals, and even a Manual for Streets 2 to turn that established thinking around within highway departments. But officers, by their very nature, will always be risk averse so you end up regularly still having to argue the toss over these things - if anything the pragmatism of the older generation of officers has been lost to a "rules is rules" type approach of the younger ones.
Manual for Streets, as referenced by Equus, blew the established requirements out of the water as it identified that providing too much visibility could actually be a bad thing for safety. It's taken many Appeals, and even a Manual for Streets 2 to turn that established thinking around within highway departments. But officers, by their very nature, will always be risk averse so you end up regularly still having to argue the toss over these things - if anything the pragmatism of the older generation of officers has been lost to a "rules is rules" type approach of the younger ones.
Swervin_Mervin said:
You can also argue the case for a lower visibility i.e. less than 215m in this case. However, you need to back up any such case with evidence of prevailing speeds on a road i.e. by getting a speed survey undertaken.
No applications for a departure from standard are required - departures are only required when dealing with trunk roads.
A warning if I may. No applications for a departure from standard are required - departures are only required when dealing with trunk roads.
Maybe DfS's are only required on Trunk Roads, but if the local authority's Development Control (or whatever they are called up there) allow something otherwise in accordance with the Regs, and there is an accident, then TD9/DMRB will be used to determine the suitability of the road/infrastruture. Any Road Safety Audit would also pick it up.
(I am a highways engineer, (I design and build this stuff day-to-day), and my Mrs is the company lawyer and we deal with investigations in to this type of thing all the time, up and down the country. I am working on something similar with a developer breaking a land drain flooding his new basement, and pumping the resulting flood water (illegally) in to the road. The road flooded,and then froze, and then there was a fatal accident. The land owner is being prosecuted and we/the HSE/the courts are all using the Trunk Road standards as benchmark best practice for checking the safety or otherwise of the road.)
You will probably get a "One step below desirable minimum" relaxation without too much fight, which is 160m. Cost to build splays will depend on a few things, but most importantly (and most expensive) will be any utilities that need to be lowered or protected, and will you need to provide drainage. BT in particular can cost £££. They scupper many Council road schemes with their costs...
Look at clearing vegetation to start with, and see what you end up with.
Good luck!
Also, page 26/27 of this doc may help visualise what you need - yes it concerns a major/minor road junction but the visibility requirement are essentially the same.
http://www.standardsforhighways.co.uk/ha/standards...
Swervin_Mervin said:
Manual for Streets, as referenced by Equus, blew the established requirements out of the water as it identified that providing too much visibility could actually be a bad thing for safety.
Correct me if I'm wrong, Mervin, but I was under the inpression that that only really holds for residential roads? We design modern housing estate roads to constrict the visibility, to force people to slow down... as a general rule, people will do so in an environment where they are expecting hazards. On a rural NSL road, where some people are too stupid to anticipate hazards like walkers, horses, cyclists or deer, they'll drive like reckless f
kwits, whatever you do to forward visibility and the risks at the higher speeds are too great to gamble on the 'traffic calming' effect of limiting forward visibility?The concern regarding too much visibility is more focussed on the side road to be honest - the old provisions of 4.5m or more were based on providing visibility for drivers of vehicles behind those at the stopline, meaning that they could exit the side road without having to stop. It essentially increased the capacity of the junction. Reducing the x-distance to 2.4m means that whilst capacity might be reduced, it's potentially safer as it forces drivers to come to a stop rather than be tempted to dive out. The research they did for MfS seems to suggest a correlation between propensity for incidents and provision of increased x-distances.
There was a period where Authorities argued that certain roads were not Streets in the sense of those "streets" they perceived MfS was directed at. However, there have been Appeal rulings where Inspectors have accepted that such factors as driver reaction times, coefficients of slip and therefore deceleration rates etc, should not be materially different between one very residential route and, say, a distributor route. That is all backed up by the research in MfS.
Following that, and partly because of the very clear disconnect that had developed between developers and authorities on how to interpret MfS, MfS2 came along to add a little more meat on the bone. It essentially added more detail regarding the research that informed MfS and, in particular, the calculation of splays for any given speed.
There are still grey areas to be honest, where one can have a difference of interpretation or opinion, and practice varies from one authority to the next as to what they're will to accept, but there are appeal decisions which could be argued to support the use of lower x-distance values and possibly y-distance values. That said, the detail provided in MfS2 means that the latter can now be calculated in more detail for those speed values of >37mph, meaning you can effectively calculate a more refined DMRB standard y-distance for a measured speed, without having to stick to the traditional 120/160/215 values i.e. you could have a 175m splay, rather than having to provide 215 because you exceed 160, as would have been the case in the past.
There was a period where Authorities argued that certain roads were not Streets in the sense of those "streets" they perceived MfS was directed at. However, there have been Appeal rulings where Inspectors have accepted that such factors as driver reaction times, coefficients of slip and therefore deceleration rates etc, should not be materially different between one very residential route and, say, a distributor route. That is all backed up by the research in MfS.
Following that, and partly because of the very clear disconnect that had developed between developers and authorities on how to interpret MfS, MfS2 came along to add a little more meat on the bone. It essentially added more detail regarding the research that informed MfS and, in particular, the calculation of splays for any given speed.
There are still grey areas to be honest, where one can have a difference of interpretation or opinion, and practice varies from one authority to the next as to what they're will to accept, but there are appeal decisions which could be argued to support the use of lower x-distance values and possibly y-distance values. That said, the detail provided in MfS2 means that the latter can now be calculated in more detail for those speed values of >37mph, meaning you can effectively calculate a more refined DMRB standard y-distance for a measured speed, without having to stick to the traditional 120/160/215 values i.e. you could have a 175m splay, rather than having to provide 215 because you exceed 160, as would have been the case in the past.
Edited by Swervin_Mervin on Thursday 27th July 17:54
Edited by Swervin_Mervin on Thursday 27th July 17:54
A question that cropped up today while creating a very long-winded access statement... (needs a lot of trimming!!):
What is the situation where overgrown trees/vegetation on HIGHWAYS land are blocking the visibility splay of a proposed access?
Who has responsibility to make that work?
Does the developer need to buy the verge & trees just to cut them back, or is Highways obliged to cut them back to allow a safe view?
What is the situation where overgrown trees/vegetation on HIGHWAYS land are blocking the visibility splay of a proposed access?
Who has responsibility to make that work?
Does the developer need to buy the verge & trees just to cut them back, or is Highways obliged to cut them back to allow a safe view?
The Highways Authority has no obligation to undertake works to facilitate a proposed development at their expense.
Any such enabling works to existing off-site highways (from trimming hedges to building a new roundabout or controlled junction) should properly be dealt with under a Section 278 agreement, but if it's as simple as cutting back or removing existing trees/hedges, if you speak nicely to the right Officer in Highways you might get them to give you written permission to undertake the works without a formal S278 in place.
Be aware that, as a technicality, the red line boundary on your Planning Application needs to include any land that you need to do development work on in order to implement the permission. And if any of this land belongs to someone else (ie. Highways, in this case), then you need to 'serve notice' on them when you submit the application. If you don't then technically, the application and any resultant planning permission can be deemed invalid. Once again, both Highways and Planning might be relaxed about it, if the work is trivial in nature, but I'd discuss it with the Planning Officer and ask them if they need plans with a revised red line to encompass the vis splay and show the trees to be removed, if only as a courtesy.
Any such enabling works to existing off-site highways (from trimming hedges to building a new roundabout or controlled junction) should properly be dealt with under a Section 278 agreement, but if it's as simple as cutting back or removing existing trees/hedges, if you speak nicely to the right Officer in Highways you might get them to give you written permission to undertake the works without a formal S278 in place.
Be aware that, as a technicality, the red line boundary on your Planning Application needs to include any land that you need to do development work on in order to implement the permission. And if any of this land belongs to someone else (ie. Highways, in this case), then you need to 'serve notice' on them when you submit the application. If you don't then technically, the application and any resultant planning permission can be deemed invalid. Once again, both Highways and Planning might be relaxed about it, if the work is trivial in nature, but I'd discuss it with the Planning Officer and ask them if they need plans with a revised red line to encompass the vis splay and show the trees to be removed, if only as a courtesy.
Swervin_Mervin said:
Happy to answer any queries you might have on this - transport planning/highway engineering is my day job. Just PM me.
What's the speed limit on the main route? 215m would, as Equus says, suggest 60mph. There are a few things that could be looked at before coming to a view as to whether you're going to struggle or not.
What's the speed limit on the main route? 215m would, as Equus says, suggest 60mph. There are a few things that could be looked at before coming to a view as to whether you're going to struggle or not.
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