Categories:  Transport Assessment, Junction Design, Travel Plan
Client: Terramond Ltd
Project Date: 2014
Contact:  Sean McIntyre
Location:  Frome, Somerset

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The Saxonvale area of Frome is an important development site near Frome’s town centre. Since the early 21st Century, planners, politicians and locals have fought over what should be done with this important brown field development site in the heart of the Town. This resulted in a planning brief being developed for the site, which was adopted as supplementary planning guidance in February 2005.

For nearly a decade development proposals for the site have come forward and fallen before achieving a consent. The nearest was a Terramond application is 2008 for a comprehensive redevelopment of the site which received a resolution to grant consent subject to signing a S106 Agreement. Sadly the S106 was never signed and the site lay abandoned for a further six years.

In 2014, frontier estates submitted an application for a foodstore, officers and a hotel on the northern part of the sites, and KTC were employed by Terramond Ltd to support an application for a small residential application of the southern section of the site.

The Transport Assessment and Travel Plan were prepared to accompany an outline application for the proposed development of up to 60 dwellings which will be served from a single vehicular access.

The Transport Assessment included a review of the site location and local transport network, and an accessibility audit of the local area by alternative modes, review of transport policy and highway safety and assessment of the traffic impact including junction modelling.

As part of the traffic impact assessment, in addition to assessing the proposed development, the impact of traffic from the adjacent proposed development (also within the wider Saxonvale development area) was also taken into account. It was found that the impact of the proposed wider development lead to congestion on the local highway network. Consequently KTC undertook the process to look for solutions to mitigate the impact of the development through the redesign of the affected junction.

The Residential Travel Plan document set out the travel plan objectives and strategy, listed travel plan measures and modal split targets and set out the monitoring and review strategy using SCCs iOnTRAVEL online monitoring system.

Planning permission was granted on appeal.