Travel plan monitoring fees and default bonds

A travel plan monitoring fee is the sum a council asks for, usually through a section 106 agreement, to pay its own officers to check whether the travel plan you promised is doing anything. A travel plan bond is the separate sum held against the day it is not. Both are negotiable, and both are frequently asked for in amounts and forms that would not survive a close reading of the statutory tests.

The practical question for a developer is not whether to resist monitoring in principle. It is whether the quantum relates to actual officer work, whether the bond is proportionate to the measures it secures, and whether the obligation ends at a defined point rather than running indefinitely.

What the fee is meant to cover

The fee covers the authority's cost of administering and monitoring the obligation: reading the annual travel survey, checking that the travel plan coordinator exists, reviewing the modal share results against the targets, and corresponding with the plan coordinator where targets are missed.

That is officer time, and it can be estimated. A defensible fee is built from an hourly or daily officer rate, a stated number of hours or days per monitoring year, and the number of monitoring years. A fee presented as a round figure with no derivation is the one to question, because the authority has to be able to show the sum relates to the work.

Councils publish annual infrastructure funding statements recording what they have received and spent, which makes monitoring income visible in a way it was not before. A developer negotiating a fee can reasonably ask what those published figures show the authority spent on monitoring in previous years, and whether the obligation it is now proposing is drafted so that it can ever be discharged. The article on discharging a section 106 obligation that no longer serves covers the route out where it is not.

The usual structure of a travel plan obligation

Travel plan obligations follow a recognisable shape, and the shape matters more than the headline figure.

The two lines to concentrate on are duration and the default mechanism. A monitoring obligation with no end date is a liability that never leaves the title, and a default payment triggered by a missed target rather than by a failure to implement measures asks the developer to guarantee behaviour it does not control.

Modal share targets and how they are measured

A modal share target states the proportion of trips expected by each mode at a given point after occupation. It is measured by survey, typically a questionnaire to occupiers or employees, and the measurement is where the arguments happen.

Three weaknesses are common. Response rates on residential travel surveys are often low, and a low response rate produces a result that cannot bear the weight placed on it. Baseline conditions change for reasons unrelated to the development, including bus service withdrawals and parking controls. And the survey date can fall in an atypical period.

Build the protections into the agreement. Specify a minimum response rate below which the survey is repeated rather than relied on. Specify the survey window, excluding school holidays. And provide for a review of targets where external circumstances have changed, with a mechanism rather than a hope.

The underlying evidence usually comes from the Transport Assessment, and the targets should be traceable to the trip generation work in it. Where the targets in the obligation are more demanding than anything the assessment supported, that is a drafting error worth correcting before completion rather than after.

Bonds and default payments

A bond is security. The developer provides a guarantee, often a bank bond or a cash deposit, which the authority can call on if the obligation is breached. A default payment is a contractual sum that becomes payable on a stated trigger.

The distinction matters because a bond is returned and a default payment is not. Where an authority offers a choice, a bond is usually better for the developer, since the money comes back on compliance.

What a default payment can lawfully fund is the real constraint. A planning obligation must meet the statutory tests: necessary to make the development acceptable in planning terms, directly related to the development, and fairly and reasonably related in scale and kind. A default sum spent on additional sustainable transport measures serving the development can meet those tests. A default sum operating as a penalty, paid into general funds, is much harder to defend. The same argument runs through review mechanisms generally, and the piece on affordable housing review mechanisms in section 106 shows how a well-drafted trigger differs from a blunt one.

Tie the trigger to implementation rather than outcome. "If the measures set out in the approved travel plan have not been implemented" is enforceable and fair. "If the modal share target is not achieved" asks you to pay for the travel choices of people you have no control over, and several of those choices depend on services the council itself provides.

Whether the fee meets the statutory tests

Apply the tests to the fee itself as well as to the plan.

On necessity, monitoring is arguably necessary where the travel plan is itself necessary to make the development acceptable. Where the travel plan is a light-touch information pack for 12 houses, a multi-year monitoring fee is harder to justify.

On direct relation, the fee must fund monitoring of this development's travel plan, not the authority's transport team in general.

On fair and reasonable scale, the derivation is the answer. Hours multiplied by rate multiplied by years, with the rate evidenced.

Where the authority has a published schedule of monitoring charges, the derivation question is partly answered, though a published schedule does not make a charge lawful if it bears no relation to the work on your site. And where obligations are already secured for other purposes, check whether the same officer time is being charged twice. The article on which instrument secures what is useful here, because highway works monitoring under a section 278 agreement is a separate charge and should not be duplicated in the section 106.

Negotiating scope and quantum

Five moves work more often than they fail.

1. Ask for the derivation in writing. A fee that cannot be derived usually comes down.
2. Propose a defined monitoring period with an express release, and a mechanism for the authority to confirm compliance at the end of it.
3. Offer a bond in place of a default payment, with the release conditions written into the agreement.
4. Tie any default trigger to implementation of measures rather than achievement of modal share.
5. Agree the survey methodology, minimum response rate and survey window in the agreement rather than leaving them to later approval.

One further point that is easy to miss: check how the obligation interacts with a future variation. Where a section 73 application is likely, the question of whether the obligation carries across arises, and the article on whether section 106 obligations carry over to a section 73 permission sets out why that needs addressing in the original drafting.

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.