Inspector acting on cost-benefit evaluation which ignored effect of “induced traffic” – Change in government evaluation policy announced after closure of inquiry – Objectors submitting unfavourable privately commissioned assessment complying with new policy – Whether Secretary of State should have studied that assessment before confirming CPO
Judgment given December 20 1966
During autumn 1994 a four week public enquiry was held into the proposed compulsory purchase of a 3 kilometre ribbon of land required for Stage II (B 4465 Shortwood to A 420 Wormley) of the Avon Ring Road . The applicants, members of SCRAPPIT, opposed the scheme because it included 2 kilometres of a disused railway given over to recreational use. In a report submitted to the first and second defendants in February 1995 the inspector pronounced in favour of the CPO, relying inter alia on a cost-benefit analysis conducted with the aid of COBA , a computerised evaluation system which showed that the proposed Stage II would have a positive economic value , the cost/benefit ratio being between 1.28 and 1.38. However, some six weeks beforehand the relevant government departments had published the findings of SACTRA (the Standing Advisory Committee on Trunk Roads Assessment) which, contrary to the fixed demand approach of COBA, recommended that future evaluations should allow for the likelihood of induced traffic, i.e. traffic generated by the very provision of the road under evaluation. In an accompanying press release the Department of Transport announced that that likelihood would thenceforth be assessed for national road schemes under consideration. In May 1995 the same department issued Local Authority Circular 2/95 calling for the same approach in assessing schemes for local roads. On 11 July 1995 the department informed the applicants’ solicitors that the new policy would apply to schemes in the post-inquiry stage. In a letter dated 27 September 1995 the first applicant informed that department that SCRAPPIT, having commissioned specialist consultants (the Metropolitan Transport Research Unit (MRTU)) to make a re-assessment adjusted for induced traffic, was able to show a cost/benefit ratio of 0.42 thus giving a minus rate of return of 58%. The letter called upon the department not to confirm the CPO before considering the full MRTU report which would be forwarded the following week. On 3 October 1995 the department confirmed that the letter would be considered when making the decision. On 11 October 1995 the first applicant forwarded the MRTU final report (which confirmed the negative result) and, after pointing out that no SACTRA materials had been considered at the enquiry , called for a re-opening of the enquiry. However, on the following day the department confirmed the CPO, the decision letter stating that nothing in the SCRAPPIT letter of 27 September (which had been duly considered) would have undermined the inspector’s conclusion that the need for Stage II had been firmly established. A departmental letter of 20 October confirmed that the last SCRAPPIT letter had arrived too late for consideration. Seeking to have the CPO quashed by the High Court, the applicants’ main contention was that the Secretary of State had failed to give any or any adequate weight to the issue of induced traffic which had become, in the light of the SACTRA report and subsequent guidance, a material consideration.
Held The application was dismissed
It was clear from the inspector’s report that the cost/benefit analysis (and hence the COBA evaluation) was only one of the many factors considered at the enquiry. Since Stage II was vital to the completion of an unbroken ringway from the M32 to the A4 both the report and the decision letter had correctly weighed the various objections against the benefits (including certain important developments on the outskirts of Bristol) which were to be derived from the ringway project in its entirety. Notwithstanding its late emergence it could not be disputed that the issue of induced traffic had been taken into account by the Secretary of State who could accordingly not be faulted for his refusal to allow the further time required for studying the full text of the MRTU report.
Timothy Corner (instructed by Bindman & Partners) appeared for the applicants; David Holgate (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) for the Secretaries of State for the Environment and Transport
