Summary

We ran a public consultation on our draft Transport Strategy and draft Strategic Investment Programme (SIP) between December 2021 and January 2022.

Thank you to everyone who shared their views. We have analysed the responses and made changes to the documents. These final documents have now been endorsed by the Transport East Forum and our Local Transport Authority members. We have also secured recognition for our Strategy from the Department of Transport through a letter of 'regard' from the Transport Minister.

This means the region's priorities must now be considered when Government develops transport policies. It also puts the East in a strong position to secure future transport funding.

We recognise finalising the Transport Strategy has taken longer than expected. We are sorry for the delay in confirming the changes to the documents.

Following increased funding from the government, we’ve started work to progress the ambitions in the Transport Strategy. See the reports on the Our Documents page for recent outputs.

You can find links to the final Transport Strategy, SIP and consultation documents at the bottom of this page.

Changes to the Transport Strategy

Following the feedback we received during the consultation, we have made the following notable changes to our strategy:

  • Adjusted the vision to strengthen decarbonising transport. Our new vision is: “A thriving Eastern region with safe, efficient and net-zero transport networks advancing a future of inclusive and sustainable growth for decades to come.”
  • Reordered the goals in our Decarbonisation to Net Zero pathway priority. These reflect comments received about the main challenge being to tackle carbon emissions from existing journeys, rather than those relating to new homes and jobs.
  • Added more emphasis on how we will work with the government’s Levelling Up policies and how transport can support environmental and social inclusion agendas.
  • Merged the pathway on ‘Unlocking International Gateways’ from two pathways, separate for ports and airports, to one.

Changes to the SIP

We have also made changes to the SIP (known as the Investment and Delivery Programme during the consultation). Some of these include:

  • Additional pan-regional projects to reflect rural/coastal - urban connectivity, levelling up and social inclusion.
  • Applying a weighting system to project assessment criteria.
  • Developed an approach to establish a regional transport carbon budget.
  • Added more emphasis on maintaining the existing networks.
  • Added more detail on how we will consider the needs of people with protected characteristics and environmental impacts in our work.

The Integrated Sustainability Appraisal has also been updated to reflect the changes to the Strategy and SIP, and in response to feedback from the consultation.