Region served Worldwide | Membership 13,000+ | |
Established 1930 (as the Institute of Highways Engineers) Type Professional association Headquarters Britannia Walk, London, UK Key people President: Sue Sharland; Chief Executive: Sue Percy | ||
The Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation (formerly the Institution of Highways and Transportation) is a learned society concerned specifically with the planning, design, construction, maintenance and operation of land-based transport systems and infrastructure.
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With over 11,500 members, the CIHT offers routes to qualifications such as Chartered and Incorporated Engineer status and also Transport Planning Professional. The CIHT is dedicated to providing support and networking opportunities to members with a calendar of technical seminars and conferences, plus social events. The CIHT has 18 regional UK branches and several overseas branches that all run local events and technical meetings.
The CIHT is a board-governed professional body. The main aims of the Council and Boards are to act as the decision making bodies for the CIHT and deliver the strategy, business plans and outputs on behalf of the membership. The CIHT’s Council and Boards were established to deliver the object of the Institution:
"to advance for the public benefit the science and art associated with highways and transportation in all their aspects; and to promote education, training, and research and development of the said science and art."The CIHT is a member of the Construction Industry Council.
History and chartered status
The history of the Institution of Highways and Transportation began in 1930 when it was simply called the Institution of Highway Engineers and more a gentleman's club than a qualifying body. The addition of 'transportation' to the functions of highway engineers emerged from the Buchanan Report, Traffic in Towns. The Institution did not take the name on board until the 1980s, when the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, repealed local highway authorities' 40-year-old powers of direction over local planning authorities' powers to grant planning permission for property development, threatening the integrated land use, transport, and socio-economic development system that had been created after the Second World War.
Later (1992), Mrs Thatcher signed Agenda Item 21 of the Rio de Janeiro UN Summit Conference about integrating developmental and environmental considerations in planning, and a road traffic reduction private members bill attained Royal Assent in 1997. This was followed by a rehashing of the statutory development plan system in 2000 and the introduction of composite local service boards into the planning system in 2005 (including police, fire and rescue services, health and ambulance services, education and welfare services, and employment and housing services); planning applicants had to submit 'Access and Design Statements' with their planning applications demonstrating they had taken all highways and transportation considerations into account, and additional 'Transport Statements' if proposed developments exceeded particular thresholds. This spawned new interest in the design of public places to improve conditions for pedestrians and cyclists, and for users of public transport and car-sharing clubs, to curtail carbon emissions.
To reflect its standing in the industry, the Institution decided in 2008 to apply for Royal Charter status, and submitted its Petition, draft Charter and ByeLaws to the Privy Council. At the Privy Council meeting held at Buckingham Palace on 15 October 2009 the Queen approved an Order instructing the Lord Chancellor to affix the Great Seal to the Institution's Charter. As a result, on 7 December 2009, the Institution was granted its Royal Charter and took its current name of the Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation.
Transport Advice Portal
The Transport Advice Portal (TAP) website is a joint venture involving the Department for Transport (DfT) and the CIHT. TAP has been devised to direct members of the transportation profession and the general public to core documents in a range of subject areas that focus on the management of user groups on roads in the UK. The portal acts as a repository of web links to documents that are seen as key guides to the planning, design and operation of road networks.
Campaign for Safe Road Design
In July 2008 the IHT, as it then was, became a partner in the Campaign for Safe Road Design which is calling on the UK government to make safe road design a national transport priority.