Case study

Transport Planning Success for New Youth Hubs across England

Mayer Brown has provided transport planning consultancy services for 20 new youth hubs across England, including a diverse mix of Scout halls and youth centres in inner-city, suburban, and rural locations, with planning applications currently being submitted for the various sites.

The project aimed to provide new or replacement high quality energy efficient buildings to improve youth services within these areas. In terms of transport, our role focused on ensuring suitable access by sustainable travel and providing a pleasant environment within the site that ‘works’ from a transport perspective including appropriate access for less mobile visitors, resulting in minimal impact on the local highway network.

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Transport Planning
Infrastructure Design
Environmental Assessment

Details

Challenge

Given the number of individual sites involved, each with its own unique context and requirements, it was essential to closely monitor progress at each location while ensuring that site-specific information was accurately recorded and appropriately assigned.

Solution

For each site, we developed bespoke transport statements, providing expert advice on access, site layout, and parking provision. Key elements of our approach included:

Review of local collision data, in particular in relation to younger person and non-car travel modes
Local walking and cycling routes, taking into account predicted catchment
Variations in travel habits by varying ages and times of day
Existing local parking provision and demand
Impact on local parking and highways where new access points were provided, ensuring appropriate visibility and design
Suitable disabled and minibus parking provision
Current and proposed delivery and servicing arrangements

We created standardised datasheets to ensure consistent data collection, calculation and presentation across all centres and provided travel surveys for completion by youth centre users. This data was key in estimating trip generation for each site, based on changes in user numbers.

Outcome

Our findings revealed considerable variations in vehicle trip generation. Scout halls generally exhibited higher car usage compared to youth centres, regardless of location. Conversely, youth centres saw a higher proportion of users walking to the site, likely due to the older age groups who can travel independently.

Our tailored approach provided each youth hub with a clear transport and travel evaluation, giving local authorities the confidence that access, parking and safety had been carefully considered for each site. Regular updates were provided to the project team regarding progress on each of the 20 sites. At time of writing, 18 of the sites had received planning consent, with the others either awaiting planning submission or determination.

For further information, please contact rbroad@mayerbrown.co.uk.

Challenge

Solution

Outcome

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