Twelve trips and a severe impact: parked cars at Colne.

What the inspector decided

The site is reached from Sheridan Road, a long, straight street of terraced houses, most without off-street parking. The parallel bays on the north side are oversubscribed, so residents park on the carriageway. The appellant offered to widen the road from Vernon Road, widen the southern footway and add an on-site turning head.

The inspector accepted the traffic figures (four arrivals and eight departures in the morning peak, six and four in the evening) and called them a modest increase. The difficulty lay elsewhere. On a peak-hour site visit, the inspector saw that where cars are parked on both sides, a driver meeting oncoming traffic may have to reverse a considerable distance, some of it close to the Vernon Road junction and the one-way system.

The widening would not stop continuous lines of parked cars narrowing the usable road, and drivers looking for a space would add further manoeuvres. The pivotal finding, at paragraph 16, was that it had not been adequately demonstrated that vehicles could safely pass each other once the mitigation was in place. The residual impact on how the street functions was therefore severe.

The turning head was a genuine improvement for refuse and emergency vehicles, but it could not solve a problem on the approach. With a housing land supply of about 2.8 years, the tilted balance applied. Housing and the highway improvements each carried moderate weight. The highway harm carried significant weight, and, in what the inspector described as a finely balanced decision, that harm was found to outweigh the benefits.

Why it matters: severe is not only about capacity

Practitioners often treat the severe test as a capacity question: ratios of flow to capacity, queue lengths, delay at a junction. Colne is a reminder that the policy is not written that way. This inspector found the network failed at the level of a single residential street, through how it functions rather than how much traffic it carries.

1. Traffic volume was not determinative. Twelve movements an hour did not save the scheme, because the harm came from the interaction between new trips and an existing constraint. The relevant question was how those movements would interact with the existing constraint.
2. Where evidence is absent, the inspector's own observations carry weight. The decision cites no parking survey, swept path or passing-place analysis. Faced with that gap, the inspector relied on what could be seen at peak time.
3. The absence of a highway authority objection was not determinative. The county council did not object to the access, and the borough council said it would have approved the scheme. Neither bound the inspector, who decided the issue afresh.

The appeal was decided under paragraph 116 of the December 2024 Framework. That test now sits in policy TR6 of the August 2026 NPPF. Check the current wording, but the point about evidence is unaffected.

Was the inspector right?

There is a respectable argument that this stretches the severe test. Give-and-take on terraced streets is normal, and Manual for Streets recognises it as something that slows traffic. Many such streets carry far more than twelve extra movements an hour without anyone calling the result severe. On that view, the decision sets a bar that much of urban England would fail.

The counter-argument is narrower and, on the facts, stronger. The inspector did not say give-and-take is unacceptable. The finding was that reversing over a notable distance near a junction and a one-way system had not been shown to be safe, and the appellant had not provided the evidence that would show it.

Read that way, this is less a statement of principle than a decision about evidence. There is no formal burden of proof in planning, but in practice the party that needs a finding must supply the material for it. A decision on principle would be hard to overcome. A finding based on missing evidence can be addressed in a future application.

What to take into the next scheme

For anyone promoting a site served by a heavily parked residential street:

• Survey the parking. A parking stress survey at the right times quantifies the pressure and, just as important, shows where the gaps fall.
• Map the passing opportunities. Plot the gaps between parked cars, measure how far a driver would have to wait or reverse, and check that drivers can see each other between them.
• Run swept paths with the cars in place. A car meeting a car, and a refuse vehicle meeting a car, on the road as it is used at peak, not on an empty carriageway.
• Design mitigation for the problem you have found. Widening helps only if it creates usable passing places. Formal passing bays, short lengths of parking restriction or a different access may do more.
• Do not treat a no-objection response as sufficient. Put the evidence in the application, so it is in front of the inspector if the scheme goes to appeal.
• Think carefully before appealing non-determination. It hands the decision to someone who will judge the scheme on the evidence alone.

For highway authorities and objectors, the decision has a corresponding implication. A modest trip rate does not end the analysis. Where the existing street is the constraint, the right questions are about passing, reversing and visibility at peak, and those are questions an applicant can reasonably be asked to answer.