The health of your borough’s streets

The Mayor develops the London-wide transport strategy and is responsible for Transport for London (TfL). The Mayor’s Transport Strategy (commonly referred to as the MTS) has three key targets:

1. To increase the trips made by ‘sustainable mode of transport’ (walking, cycling, public transport) from 63% to 80% by 2041
2. For everyone to undertake the daily 20 minutes of active travel they need to stay healthy by 2041
3. Vision Zero for road danger: the elimination of all deaths and serious injuries on London’s transport system by 2041

There are also a whole host of other detailed London-wide targets, particularly related to air quality.

Boroughs’ Local Implementation Plans

London Boroughs control 95% of London’s roads so what they do matters.

The Greater London Authority Act 1999 requires each borough to prepare a Local Implementation Plan (LIP) containing its proposals for the implementation of the Mayor’s Transport Strategy in its area. A LIP must include borough objectives and explain how meeting these will contribute to achieving the Mayor’s Transport Strategy. TfL assesses draft LIPs on the Mayor’s behalf to ensure that the core requirements have been met. The Mayor then decides whether to approve them.

TfL issues guidance, the current version, LIP Guidance: Guidance for Borough Officers on Developing the Third Local Implementation Plan, is known as LIP3 because this is the third iteration of the guidance.

Finding the targets for your borough

As part of the LIP Guidance, the Mayor provides each borough with detailed data and targets for a wide range of indicators. These are set out separately from the main guidance, in a spreadsheet named LIP3 MTS outcomes borough data pack – Dec 2021 which is downloadable via the Public TfL data site (or can be downloaded from the link below). To find the targets for your borough, as well as the current borough status for each indicator, go to the tab called ‘Borough dashboard’ and choose your borough from the drop-down menu at the top left.

LIP funding and borough transport strategies

LIP funding is designed to help the boroughs introduce changes. It is not to help with discharging their statutory duties in relation to roads, for example roads maintenance, which is funded through government grant and Council Tax. Local authority budgets are extremely tight so the extra LIP funding is important, but it is by no means the only funding they have.

Though the Mayor can’t enforce the LIP guidance or targets, there is a clear expectation that boroughs will follow the LIP Guidance in developing plans for spending the funds.

So, the Mayor and the boroughs have to work closely together if the targets in the Mayor’s Strategy are to be met. The emphasis is on collaboration, but the Mayor and TfL can withhold LIP funding if borough transport strategies are deemed in variance with their duty to fulfil the MTS.