The Cases for an English Parliament and Spatial Plan

A newly formed House of Lords Committee on the Built Environment is currently taking submissions on a range of issues, including the case for an English Spatial Plan – http://www.parliament.uk/built-environment Meanwhile, a consultation led by the Royal Town Planning Institute and the northern office of the Institute for Public Policy Research is seeking contributions about the nature and scope of a strategic planning framework for the north of England http://www.planningresource.co.uk/article/1353028/rtpi-calls-spatial-plan-north-england

However, previous attempts at regional – never mind national – spatial planning in England were widely regarded as unsatisfactory in practice whilst having broad support in principle. This contrasts with the experience of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, all of whom have a national spatial plan as well as devolved government. In England, strategic planning has usually meant the dreaded quangoisation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quango and met resistance as a consequence.

This is one reason why an English spatial plan requires a devolved parliament for England. The case for an English parliament as part of a (more) federal UK is now widely recognised across the political spectrum, with Labour business spokesman Chuka Ummuna amongst the latest politicians to come out in support of the idea http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/22/chuka-umunna-calls-for-english-parliament-federal-uk?CMP=share_btn_gp which is also favoured by Conservative grandee John Redwood http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/19/scotland-england-own-parliament-gordon-brown-home-rule-regional-devolution

Returning to the case for an English spatial plan, perhaps the most pressing reason is the predicted level of population increase for the UK, and mainly across parts of England, between now and the middle of the 21st century. The European statistics agency Eurostat forecasts that the UK will have the largest population (around 80 million) in Europe by 2050, becoming its most populous country http://www.cityam.com/221125/population-growth-uk-become-biggest-country-european-union-2050 http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Main_Page

The kind of fragmented, chaotic spatial planning system described in my previous post is no longer sustainable. Decisions about the location of major new development in England need to be made at a national level within a democratically accountable system of devolved government. Added to the challenges of projected increases in population is that of climate change, and the fact that many of those areas most subject to development pressures, like the South East, are also places most vulnerable to both water shortages and flooding – http://documents.hants.gov.uk/sesl/AgendaItem5FloodingandEconomicGrowth9414Finalpdf.pdf

Given the also widely acknowledged challenge of accommodating population growth, in 2012 the House of Commons voted in favour of restricting the UK population to 70 million http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-19492300 although it was unclear how this was to be achieved. What is clear is that a significant proportion of the electorate remain concerned about this issue and the problems to which such growth can give rise at a local level. A Mooc (massive open online course) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_open_online_course might be a good starting point for the informed “Big Conversation” that is obviously needed on “Sustainable Planning and Population in England”.

A separate Mooc might tackle the development of an English Parliament and (more) federal system of UK government. In the meantime, these two recent articles from the Guardian and Financial Times offer some ideas as to how such a system might work http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/09/federal-kingdom-britain-eu-referendum-scotland-snp http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/24ea7de0-c65e-11e4-add0-00144feab7de.html#axzz3hZDmGTBW

“Maoist” Coalition’s local planning legacy chaos in South Worcestershire

There has been national regime change since this blog last posted. The self-styled “Maoist” – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12048836 – coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, has been replaced by a majority – albeit small – Conservative government. Before dwelling on the prospects for English spatial planning of regime change, here is a reflection on the Coalition’s record on planning as reflected in the “chaos” of the South Worcestershire Development Plan (SWDP) Examination.

According to former Coalition Tory planning minister Nick Boles, the aim of the former self-styled Maoist regime was a “people power” revolution that would unleash “chaotic” effects across local communities http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/dec/18/coalition-local-planning-boles-chaos Mr Boles told the media: “Do you believe planning works? That clever people sitting in a room can plan how people’s communities should develop, or do you believe it can’t work? I believe it can’t work, David Cameron believes it can’t, Nick Clegg believes it can’t. Chaotic therefore in our vocabulary is a good thing.”

With hindsight, it is hardly surprising that the chaos invoked by the former planning minister should be rather different from the people’s revolution envisaged by the Coalition. Instead, we saw a return to the Stalinist central planning agenda of New Labour in the guise of a National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) with similarly enforced housing targets for local communities, whether they want them or not. The re-imposition of the dreaded targets has certainly brought chaos.

As previously described, the SWDP Examination began nearly two years ago in 2013, and then promptly stopped for 6 months so the government-appointed Planning Inspector could determine whether it met the housing targets of the NPPF. The Inspector then declared that the draft local plan was unsound and additional sites must be allocated for housing. A public consultation on new site allocations followed and the examination resumed in early 2015, with the Inspector clearly signalling “that clever people sitting in a room can plan how people’s communities should develop” whether they like it or not.

Not being amongst the “clever people” funded to sit through the SWDP Examination, the present writer has only attended a small number of sittings but she can report one remarkable feature of these. On each occasion the same property developer’s representative was holding forth on the need for his client to be granted exactly what they wanted by the local authority, apparently with the full encouragement of the Planning Inspector. Let me illustrate this using said developer’s requirement for the local planning authority to be flexible on the issue of additional retail space in Worcester and environs.

The Inspector’s apparent permissiveness (or perhaps that should be submissiveness) has encouraged another company to submit a planning application for the development of a major out-of-town shopping centre on the edge of the city which, it is widely agreed, would compromise the viability of retailing in the centre of Worcester if consent is granted (which it may be even if the city council refuses permission) http://worcesterobserver.co.uk/news/city-traders-fear-50million-hit-from-proposed-retail-park-11304/

This brings me nicely to the prospects for more planning chaos – albeit again of  a different kind – with the election of this Millennium’s first Conservative government. However, if people are hoping for something, well, 21st century and sustainable, the prospect of Worcester Woods Shopping Centre should make them recall instead the Tory planning regime of the late 1980s. In short, this government looks like it could take spatial planning back thirty years. So much for the new cultural revolution!

In the meantime, the SWDP Examination is currently in recess and it is unclear whether there will be further hearings later this year http://www.swdevelopmentplan.org/?page_id=5393 I previously joked that the process would not be over until the fat man sings, meaning that former Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Eric Pickles would have the final say on South Worcestershire’s long running local plan saga.

However, the now Rt Hon Sir Eric Pickles MP – along with receiving his knighthood – was recently appointed the government’s anti-corruption champion – https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/inter-ministerial-group-on-anti-corruption-members/inter-ministerial-group-on-anti-corruption-members  This does seem to be a logical career development, as there is much evidence to suggest that the more chaotic the spatial planning regime, the more opportunities there are for collusion between development interests, lack of transparency in decision-making and a greater likelihood of actual corruption.

Honourable Members Immortalised in Worcestershire Parkway Station Proposal

As this blog starts 2015 with yet another story about a large car park in the Worcester environs, it’s time to sex things up as they say in the honourable profession of journalism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexed_up So first of all there’s a new byline: “Spatial Planning, Fifty Shades of Grey, Car Parks…” replaces the worthy-sounding “Green Woman visits Grey Areas in the Public Interest”. Then, as the consultation on the proposed Worcestershire Parkway Regional Interchange – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worcestershire_Parkway_Regional_Interchange – has invited suggestions for a piece of public art to grace this glorified car park, we too have a proposal.

Readers will no doubt remember the cautionary tale of a former Minister for Civil Society http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_Newmark in the present government who liked to take pictures of his “honourable member” on a smart phone for circulation to admiring lady friends. Unfortunately, said gentleman was stung by a national newspaper whilst caught in the act and forced to resign. How wonderful, therefore, if this story from modern civil society could be immortalised in a major new piece of public art for railway passengers to ponder as they wait for trains. I’m thinking of a sculpture by Tracey Emin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracey_Emin of a group of local politicians filming their members, artistic images* (but not outraging public decency http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outraging_public_decency) of which would then be broadcast on a large screen, together with information about train delays and cancellations of the kind travellers on the Cotswold Line http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotswold_Line will be only too familiar. The sculpture and its overhead screen would provide a lasting riposte to stranded passengers tempted to ask “what pricks came up with this project?” when their trains unexpectedly terminated at a large Worcestershire car park.

* Perhaps something along the lines of Puppetry of the Penis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puppetry_of_the_Penis performances of which have been staged in the traveller catchment area of the proposed Worcestershire Parkway.

Subsidiarity principle in transport planning

Before returning to the subject of large car parks, and the proposed Worcestershire rail parkway in particular, I want to briefly discuss the subsidiarity – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity – principle in sustainable transport planning with reference to the West Midlands region. Wikipedia defines “subsidiarity is an organizing principle of decentralisation, stating that a matter ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest, or least centralised authority capable of addressing that matter effectively”

The Conservative Leader of Worcestershire County Council yesterday uttered a battle cry against the revival of city-regions in the local paper – http://www.worcesternews.co.uk/news/11315842.We_refuse_to_be_sucked_up_into__Greater_Birmingham___says_Worcestershire_County_Council_leader/  – This revival is “expected to focus on re-shaping Local Enterprise Partnerships, of which Worcestershire’s is one of the smallest in the country.” I have dealt with the sustainability of the County’s LEP in earlier posts and my own view is that amalgamation with the neighbouring Greater Birmingham, Marches or Gloucestershire LEP needs to be properly considered. However, objective consideration of development options is something that Worcestershire enterprises, in which I include the local authorities, seem to find very difficult, if not impossible.

Therefore, leaving aside the LEP question, I would, certainly favour the out-sourcing of Worcestershire’s strategic public transport planning functions to a regional organisation. This would enable decisions on investment in new railway stations to be taken at a West Midlands, rather than local level. The County Council could continue to act as contract manager – its main role as far as I can glean –  for various sub-regional functions and the district authorities with the delivery of local services, including facilities for pedestrians and cyclists.

The latter arrangement should enable a higher standard of urban design in Worcester which would make it more attractive to existing users as well as potential investors and visitors. Another article in the local paper this week reflects the problems associated with the city’s increasing number of empty buildings http://www.worcesternews.co.uk/news/11309589.Poor_response_puts_Worcester_shopping_and_leisure_revamp_at_risk/  This also suggests there is a need for a local regeneration partnership, as the LEP seems far more interested in so-called peri-urban, or edge of town, development than with city-centre revitalisation. However, Worcester’s regeneration also needs coherent local transport planning which the County Council has persistently failed to deliver and a new private-public city partnership might also take this on.

PLANNING: A GREAT PARK AND RIDE SWINDLE?

“County council leadership vote through park and ride axe” – http://www.worcesternews.co.uk/news/11266946.display/?ref=gprec  was a headline in the Worcester News this week. The article followed earlier news that the city of Worcester in the English Midlands has some of the worst traffic congestion in the country – http://www.worcesternews.co.uk/news/11261184.It_s_official___Worcester_has_third_worst_rush_hour_traffic_in_the_country/?ref=mc – prompting one elderly gentleman to write to the newspaper to ask “Whatever happened to Shank’s pony?” –  http://www.worcesternews.co.uk/news/letters/read/11253131.Whatever_happened_to_Shank__39_s_pony_/?ref=gprec  There was also a press announcement that a “New parkway rail station is now “closer than ever”: http://www.worcesternews.co.uk/news/11222240.display/?ref=gprec  Added to these stories is the ongoing saga of Worcester’s southern by-pass to which additional capacity – ie widening and ever-larger roundabouts – is being added to the upset of both local residents and road users: “Trees cut down for notorious Southern Link Road works” –  http://www.worcesternews.co.uk/news/11025809.Trees_cut_down_ready_for_notorious_Southern_Link_Road_works/ – and “New petition launched over Worcester’s revamped Whittington Island” http://www.worcesternews.co.uk/news/11238320.New_petition_launched_over_Worcester_s_revamped_Whittington_island

One can easily glean from the above narrative that transport is a problem for Worcester and its environs. However, the underlying issues are poor spatial planning, urban design and contract management, as well as a strong tendency for the development of major projects to be unduly influenced by the interests of commercial stakeholders, including local and central government, rather than the public interest. This situation has led to ongoing commentary in the local paper expressing concern about the probity of some of those involved in the transport planning process, on both the delivery side and amongst beneficiaries of highway investment, including large car parks. However, for reasons cited in the previous post on a lack transparency in local authority management, as well as other factors, it is usually difficult to uncover the precise set of circumstances which have led to bad decisions being made and large sums of public money misspent.

The case of major investment in bus park and ride facilities in Worcester since 2001 and the axing of these earlier this week does, nevertheless, illustrate what might well  be described as an unfortunate intersection of transport planning failures emanating from central and local government sources. To start with shortcomings in the nationwide mechanisms for transport funding, these encourage local authorities to bid for grants to implement projects often regardless of whether what is proposed is likely to be suitable or sustainable in a particular location. This inevitably leads to the development of so-called “white elephants”, of which the £6.8 million bus park and ride facility at “Sixways”, near Junction 6 of the M5 motorway, which opened in 2009 is a very good example. To make matters worse, this project may also have undermined the viability of a similar facility nearer the city centre which had started operation some five years earlier and is also now to close. Some £15 million of public money, including construction and operating costs, has been spent on these projects and the only real beneficiary, as far as I can ascertain, is Worcester Rugby Club at Sixways – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worcester_Warriors – which has acquired a very large car, unfortunately at the same time as it has been relegated from the premier league.

I shall be visiting Worcester’s transport planning failures, and another major white elephant proposal – albeit also with the prospect of a large legacy car park – the Worcestershire parkway rail station, in future posts.

Postscript: There is a recent article about park and ride schemes on the “confused.com” website:  http://www.confused.com/car-insurance/articles/jury-still-out-on-park-and-ride-schemes The comments from the Campaign for Better Transport are worth noting: http://www.bettertransport.org.uk/

CORRUPTION IN UK LOCAL GOVERNMENT

I’ve just has a look at Transparency UK’s report of October 2013 on “Corruption in Local Government: the Mounting Risks” – http://www.transparency.org.uk/component/content/article/10-publications/747-corruption-in-uk-local-government-the-mounting-risks  The introduction states that:

“…….A disturbing picture emerges, and one on which experts and interviewees were agreed. On the one hand, the conditions are present in which corruption is likely to thrive – low levels of transparency, poor external scrutiny, networks of cronyism, reluctance or lack of resource to investigate, outsourcing of public services, significant sums of money at play and perhaps a denial that corruption is an issue at all. On the other hand, the system of checks and balances that previously existed to limit corruption has been eroded or deliberately removed. These changes include the removal of independent public audit of local authorities, the withdrawal of a universal national code of conduct, the reduced capacity of the local press and a reduced potential scope to apply for freedom of information requests….”.

If this sounds all too familiar, I would strongly recommend you download the report (it’s free!) and have a good look at it – something I shall be doing.

The following “significant examples” of corruption in English local government are cited:
• Bribery in local government, such as in the case of a councillor in the West Country who was recorded making claims that he could obtain planning permission in return for payment;
• Collusion, such as the construction contracts bid-rigging scandal in local government after which the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) issued penalties to 103 companies worth a total of £129.5 million;
• Conflicts of interest, such as that of former leader of Lincolnshire County Council who sought to influence the route of a new bypass so as to divert it through his own land for financial benefit;
• Corruption-related fraud, such as the case of the head of energy procurement for the Local Authority South East Region, who defrauded over 120 local authorities at a personal gain of around £400,000;
• Electoral corruption, such as the in the 2004 Birmingham local elections, when over 1,500 votes cast were subsequently identified as fraudulent.

However, the report notes a strong tendency amongst those involved with UK public administration, including politicians and officials, to deny the existence of a corruption problem in local government, although this is not the perception of the public, amongst whom a majority of people expressed concern.

“DEEP, DEEP STRUCTURAL PROBLEMS”

According to the Financial Times last year, a Turkish commentator on political infighting in his country compared the protagonists – followers of prime minister Erdogan and opposing Gulenists – with the movie “Alien vs Predator”. This analogy also springs to mind as a description of the ongoing spat between Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne and Labour shadow Ed Balls concerning the mismanagement of the British economy. It was into this unedifying spectacle that Canadian Mark Carney was parachuted last year as our new “rock star” Governor of the Bank of England. However, Mr Carney has now encountered the wrath of another creature from outer space, “The Thing”,  Nigel (father of Nigella) Lawson – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Lawson

Is short, Lord Lawson has criticised Mr Carney’s widely publicised comments yesterday on the “deep, deep structural problems” of the UK economy as “bleating” – http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/may/17/bank-governor-housing-market-economic-recovery  According to the Free Online Dictionary, a “bleat” is: “the characteristic cry of a goat or sheep; a sound similar to this cry; or  a whining, feeble complaint.”. I take it that the former Chancellor of the Exchequer intended the latter meaning, unless he intended to imply – in a Thing, Alien or Predator-like manner –  that the Bank of England Governor is a hapless ungulate “bleating” as he awaits slaughter (metaphorical of course). Of course, it is “The Thing”, or rather the economic policies of Nigel Lawson during the 1980s, that is the ultimate source of Mr Carney’s problems as I shall illustrate with some history.

In the autumn of 1988, I purchased a small flat in South East London for which my deposit was 10% of the price and the mostgage just short of 3 times my salary . Within the next 2 years, I would be made redundant from my job in the property sector (but would fortunately obtain another with a major firm of accountants), my monthly mortgage payments would escalate dramatically and the value of my home plummet (equally dramatically) so I was in “negative equity”. In short, I was one of the many hapless victims of the early 1990s bust which followed the 1980s boom (engineered by Lawson and many others) and would spend many years bleating about this until the value of my flat recovered (some ten years later) and I was able to move on.

However, whilst I experienced the downside of the bust, many others experienced its upside in the shape of more affordable housing and the wider economy was an undoubted beneficiary, as the current Minister Without Portfolio Ken Clarke, who was also Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, will tell anyone generous enough to follow his tweets – https://twitter.com/KenClarkeMP  Now aside from being a keen birdwatcher, Mr Clarke was also “the last Chancellor to pass on a surplus” and, not only that, the British economy did appear to re-balance away from the London/South East property sector and in favour of “The Regions” during his tenure.  So what went wrong?

Had Ken Clarke become prime minister in 1997, or even 2001, for like the lady on Twitter, many have indeed said “I know he’s a Tory but I do like Ken Clarke” – it is possible that Britain would have joined the Eurozone, instead of the US-led invasion of Iraq. This would have been an indisputably better move in my opinion and the world might have been a much better place as a consequence. But alas, it was not to be. Geo-politics aside, we saw instead a US administration with its brain well and truly switched off regulation of the national and international economy, together with British and European governments which followed suit. Moreover, this occurred within a great re-balancing of the global economy in favour of China and other countries.

Far from their being “No More (Tory-style) Boom and Bust” to quote former Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, there was a far greater one than even “The Thing” itself could have imagined. However, whilst the US and certain European countries, such as Spain and Ireland, experienced profound structural adjustments – notably in the form of  job losses and falls in property values – in the wake of this, the British economy did not for several reasons. One of the main ones was that the business model of the UK mass housebuilders, with some of the best margins for the sector anywhere in the world, had changed profoundly since the bust of the early 1990s (when many property companies, including my employer, went bankrupt).

In short, the supply of new building was constrained, not by planning approvals as the sector had a massive land bank with available consents, but by high operating costs and land values to which no one with a stake in Britain’s post-Thatcher property-owning democracy, least of all the elected government of the day, wanted to see a structural adjustment in the form of lower prices. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that virtually all UK government intervention in the post-crash domestic economy, including virtual nationalisation of the banking system, artificially depressed interest rates, quantitative easing and, most recently, the “Help To Buy” scheme for house purchasers, have contributed to pushing property prices back up.

Now this is the sorry state of things in which our rock-star Bank of England of England Governor finds himself a year in the job. Sorry Gov, but I could have told you so for a fraction of your remuneration package (including a large family house in an accessible part of London afforded by the public purse). The problem for and with Mr Carney is that he has only contracted to serve the good Lady of Threadneedle Street (ie the Bank of England) for a mere five years. This strongly suggests that he will be looking for short-term solutions to the UK economy’s “deep, deep structural problems”, which as I said previously go back to the policies of “The Thing” in the 1980s (and even beyond!).

My guess is that Mr Carney is deeply committed to the “urban sprawl” model of economic progress, albeit that this has not done a great deal for the United States or those European countries, such as Spain and Ireland, which had large-scale housebuilding programmes during the Noughties boom years. Nevertheless, aside from long-time civil service enthusiasts, there are quite a few in the present government who believe in this model too, and a similar number in the Labour Party, because it does offer some prospect of short-term gains to the Treasury when the national finances still remain in a parlous state, largely because of the measures used to prop up the banking system and property market that I’ve already mentioned.

However, I have another solution which as it meets very well the needs of the Bank of England Governor, should serve equally well those of the ordinary citizen: publicly funded housing in accessible areas of towns and cities, for which their many empty properties and brownfield sites could very well cater. Add to that a programme of investment in infrastructure on a par with that which has transformed the capital in recent years, and also helped fuel inflated housing prices in London and the south-east, and we could be well on the way to re-balancing the wider regional economy. This might even encourage people in Scotland to remain part of the UK.  Let’s face it, we’re all fed up to the teeth with watching repeats of “Alien vs Predator” and “The Thing”.

Serious Consequences of Urban Sprawl

The following link considers the serious consequences of urban sprawl in North America. Why is UK government planning for England seeking to follow the bad example of the US, which is increasingly looking to European good practice in urban development?

http://www.fastcodesign.com/3028661/slicker-city/urban-sprawl-get-fat-stay-poor-and-die-in-car-crashes?partner=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+fastcodesign%2Ffeed+%28Co.Design%29

National Geographic also has some excellent articles on the impact of urban sprawl in the United States which will ring true for many in Middle England : http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/habitats/urban-sprawl/

Update: Compliance, Corruption and Transparency Categories Added

The above categories, with particular reference to urban development and infrastructure projects, have been added to this blog – please see paragraph three of the updated post below.

LEVIATHAN IN THE LURE OF MAMMON

“Leviathan in the lure of Mammon: limits of political Islam in Turkey” is the title of an excellent article in Open Democracy by Kerem Oktem – http://www.opendemocracy.net/kerem-oktem/leviathan-in-lure-of-mammon-limits-of-political-islam-in-turkey The article draws attention to “a growing number of environmental movements that have flourished wherever new dams, hydroelectric power-plants and nuclear-reactors are threatening the livelihoods of locals. Thousands of these projects are now being planned and constructed, and local resistance has been robust even amid collusive attempts by private investors and security forces to suppress any form of dissent. The hundreds of thousands who protested at Gezi Park and many more beyond the vicinity of Istanbul’s Taksim Square went far beyond white-collar employees and students, and their recent politicisation adds yet another obstacle in the way of Erdoğan’s search for majority consent.”

The importance of environmental concerns in recent Turkish political protest movements is something that has hardly received any coverage in western media, although regional networks such as AL Monitor http://www.al-monitor.com have drawn attention to this. In addition to the energy projects referred to above, urban development and transport schemes in and around Istanbul have been a major focus of concern. The Turkish regime along with others in the Middle East, albeit with their own competing brands of political Islam, have combined religious conservatism with authoritarian crony capitalism. However, the absence of real political alternatives makes democratic development difficult and people in Turkey have increasingly turned to civil society and community-based organisations. These need more support from the European Union and western NGOs.

However, the description of “Leviathan in lure of Mammon” can be applied far beyond the Turkish context. Infrastructure projects are particular targets for a range of problems, including lack of regulatory compliance and transparency, in addition to outright corruption, as this very useful report (pdf download), entitled “Fighting Corruption in the Road Transport Sector” describes: http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCwQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sutp.org%2Fcomponent%2Fphocadownload%2Fcategory%2F158-td10%3Fdownload%3D616%3Asut-td-10-fighting-corruption-in-the-road-transport-sectoren&ei=-kRqU-pkids86JOBqAQ&usg=AFQjCNGPUi1RWYOXy1IPSZECXqQ_RbX3Tg&bvm=bv.66111022,d.ZWU The report, sponsored by the German Federal Ministry for (International) Co-operation and Development, opens with a case study from Cologne.