Holding directions on the strategic road network

A holding direction stops the local planning authority granting permission while National Highways works out whether your scheme harms the strategic road network. It is not a refusal and it is not an objection. It is a legal brake, issued under the directions procedure in the Development Management Procedure Order 2015, that removes the council's power to issue a decision for a stated period. The council may want to approve your application. It cannot, until the direction is lifted, and lifting it is a negotiation with a body that is not the planning authority.

What a holding direction does

The effect is procedural and absolute for as long as it lasts. The authority may resolve to grant permission, and it may not issue the decision notice.

Three consequences follow immediately. The statutory determination period keeps running, so if you have not agreed an extension of time you acquire a right of appeal against non-determination, which transfers the decision to the Planning Inspectorate. A resolution to grant at committee becomes a resolution subject to the direction being lifted, which in practice means the officer report has to come back. And any option or funding date tied to a decision needs revisiting, because the timescale is now outside the council's control.

Directions are issued for a defined period and can be renewed. Ask, in writing, for the date it expires and the specific matters that have to be resolved before it is lifted. A direction without a written list of outstanding matters is one you cannot plan against.

Who issues it and on what grounds

National Highways is the statutory consultee for development affecting the strategic road network, the motorways and trunk roads for which it is the highway authority. Its consultation response takes one of four forms: no objection, no objection subject to conditions or obligations, a holding direction, or a recommendation that permission be refused.

The grounds for a holding direction are practical rather than policy-led. Insufficient information to assess the effect on the network. Disagreement about trip generation or distribution. An unresolved capacity or safety effect at a junction with the network. Mitigation that has been described but not designed or secured. Sometimes simply a scheme that arrived without pre-application engagement, where the assessment assumptions were never agreed.

Note the pattern: most holding directions are about process, not principle. They are issued because the evidence is not yet capable of being assessed, which means most of them are resolvable by producing the right evidence rather than by changing the scheme.

The circular that governs the approach

The Department for Transport's Circular 01/2022 on the strategic road network and the delivery of sustainable development sets out how National Highways engages with the planning system. It is the document to read before you write the transport chapter, and it is the document to quote when the negotiation stalls.

Two themes in it shape the argument. The first is that National Highways is expected to support sustainable development and to work with applicants, with objections reserved for cases where there would be an unacceptable effect on safety or a severe effect on network operation. The second is the emphasis on managing demand and on measures other than capacity enhancement: travel planning, sustainable access, and monitor-and-manage approaches with triggers rather than upfront highway works.

That second theme is the one applicants underuse. Where a junction shows a marginal capacity effect in a design year a decade out, a monitoring regime with defined triggers and a bonded contingency is often more acceptable than an argument about whether the model is right.

Evidence that resolves a holding direction

Work through the list in order, because each item depends on the one before it.

1. Agreed assessment scope: study area, junctions to be assessed, base year, opening year, design year and the committed development list.
2. Trip generation and distribution, derived from an accepted database with the site categories, date range and area filters stated, and sensitivity tests where the selection is arguable.
3. Junction modelling for the agreed scenarios, with model files supplied and calibration evidence for the base year.
4. Safety analysis using personal injury collision data for a defined period and study area, with any pattern identified and addressed.
5. Access design to the relevant technical standard, including visibility, geometry and any departure from standard identified as such.
6. Mitigation design at a level allowing cost and deliverability to be confirmed.
7. The securing mechanism: a section 278 agreement, a planning obligation, a bond, or conditions with defined triggers.

Most of this belongs in the Transport Assessment, which is the document National Highways reads first and the one whose assumptions they will test hardest. The demand management side sits in a Travel Plan with monitoring, targets and a mechanism for remedial measures if targets are missed.

Where the trip rates are the point in dispute, the derivation matters more than the output, and the note on justifying trip rates from a national database covers how to present the query rather than just the answer.

Timescales and the effect on determination

Budget months, not weeks, and manage the clock deliberately.

Agree an extension of time with the council rather than letting the determination period lapse by accident. An appeal against non-determination takes the decision away from a local authority that may be sympathetic and puts it in front of an inspector who will want the same evidence anyway, so hold it in reserve rather than using it first.

Ask the council to seek confirmation from National Highways that the direction will be lifted once specified documents are received, and get that condition precedent to lifting recorded in the case file. Then produce the documents in one package rather than in instalments, because each partial submission restarts a review cycle.

Where the scheme depends on works delivered through a section 278 agreement, the technical approval process runs separately from planning and has its own programme, as set out in the note on section 278 agreements.

Mitigation and contributions on the network

Mitigation on the strategic road network comes in four forms, and they have different acceptability.

Physical works at a junction, delivered under a section 278 agreement with National Highways, are the most certain and the slowest. Contributions towards a programmed scheme are workable where that scheme exists, is funded and is programmed, and unworkable where it is aspirational. Demand management through a travel plan with binding targets is increasingly the preferred route for schemes with marginal effects. And monitor-and-manage arrangements, where triggers based on measured flows release agreed measures, suit long build-out periods.

Whatever the form, the test National Highways applies is whether the mitigation is deliverable and secured. A drawing without a cost plan and an agreement route is not mitigation.

Escalation where agreement is not reached

If the technical discussion stalls, escalate on process rather than on principle.

Ask for a meeting with the case officer and the National Highways development management contact together, with an agenda listing the outstanding matters from their own written list. Where the disagreement is about model assumptions, propose a joint sensitivity test rather than exchanging reports. Where it is about the necessity of works, ask which policy test in Circular 01/2022 is said to be failed, since "unacceptable safety impact" and "severe network impact" are different tests with different evidence.

If the direction is renewed without new grounds, that is the point to raise it formally with the council as a delay affecting determination, and to consider the appeal route with advice. Judicial review of a direction is available in principle and is rarely the proportionate answer for a development scheme.

Illustrative example: a 130,000 m² logistics scheme where a holding direction was issued over trip distribution at a motorway junction. The resolution was a jointly agreed distribution using two alternative assignment assumptions, a bonded contribution to a programmed junction improvement, and a travel plan with a modal share target monitored at years one, three and five. Fourteen weeks from direction to withdrawal, with no change to the site layout.

Enter your postcode on PlanScope to see which transport documents a scheme near the strategic road network is likely to need.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.