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Regional Evidence Base

The Housing Green Paper requires Regional Planning Bodies and Regional Spatial Strategies to take into account infrastructure and related constraints. Communities and Local Government published a policy document on the proposed content of Integrated Regional Strategies in January 2009, available here. This notes that the IRS should demonstrate how its plans for growth, housing and other development have had regard to available infrastructure. It states that infrastructure includes:

Transport
Waste
Water
Minerals
Culture, media and sport
Environmental infrastructure

In thinking about the delivery of the RSS on the ground and in preparing for the IRS infrastructure plays a key role. Work on helping Local Authorities demonstrate infrastructure delivery is contained here.

Regional Integrated Infrastructure Scoping Study

The former Regional Assembly commissioned Arup to undertake a Regional Integrated Infrastructure Scoping Study (RIIS) in early 2008. This work sought to identify providers’ areas of operations and networks, types of strategic infrastructure, and provide a methodology for assessing capacity, to help achieve greater strategic alignment of infrastructure and inform the RSS Update. The report is available here.

More detail on individual infrastructure work streams is available by clicking on the following headings:

Challenges in scoping different infrastructures

Infrastructure	Challenges
Transport	availability of robust data; good engagement and understanding of planning by providers; mix of public sector authorities and private sector providers.
Social	varied availability of robust data; varied engagement and understanding of planning by providers; mostly public sector providers
Physical/Critical	non-availability of publically accessible data; limited engagement and understanding of planning by providers; private sector providers
Green	availability of robust data; good engagement, and understanding of planning by providers; mostly public sector providers; a new concept

Current Activity

We are currently using the Regional Integrated Infrastructure Scoping Study to develop an evidence base for the Integrated Regional Strategy. The evidence base will need to be ready by March 2010. Local Authorities have a role through officer groups and the Regional Infrastructure Delivery Steering Group to influence this evidence base. It will also be important to build elements of the evidence base from local information as the infrastructure delivery plans of local authorities progress.

Progress

The table below charts the progress towards a regional evidence base. More detail is contained in the links to specific infrastructure topics above.

Activity	Current Status	Future Work
Consider infrastructure under four broad groupings - transport, physical, social and green.	Agreed this split at Technical Advisory Group meeting on 18th June 2009.	Use these headings to inform the evidence base for IRS.
Engage regional infrastructure providers.	Ongoing. Have held various meetings with individual infrastructure and utility providers, the Regional Utilities Group, the Dept for Culture Media and Sport Agencies(Sport England, English Heritage and the Arts Council), the Police, and the Strategic Health Authority.	Ongoing engagement. Invite utilities groups to Technical Advisory Group meeting in October.
Identify strategic transport, physical, social and green infrastructure using PAS tables as a start.	Well advanced for transport and green infrastructure. Good progress on physical. Good progress on identification of some social infrastructure (especially from National Health Service and Strategic Health Authority). More limited progress on police related issues.	Complete identification of strategic infrastructure for purposes of IRS evidence base. Recognise that what is "strategic" may differ between areas and infrastructure types. The Department of Culture Media and Sport has commissioned a study to look at provision of asset data to stakeholders â€“ this will report in summer 2009, and should facilitate greater access to related data thereafter.
Create maps based on Geographic Information Systems data showing all types of strategic infrastructure.	Gathering data in map form. Good progress made on identifying strategic network of green infrastructure in West Yorkshire, and parts of South and North Yorkshire; progress in the Humber slow but catching up. Good progress on establishing operational areas and networks of utilities for physical infrastructure.	Considering appointment of consultants to bring this information together.
Establish capacity objectively for each element of strategic infrastructure.	Good progress made on identifying / assessing transport capacity, particularly rail. Considering approach to green infrastructure capacity. Engaging utilities and gleaning views on capacity. Examining standards developed by South West region for social infrastructure.	Apply methodology to identified strategic infrastructure. Consider how this links to capacity issues identified at a sub-regional and local level to ensure consistency.
Identify interventions needed.	Considering.

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