Traffic Regulation Orders (TROs)

Use of Traffic Regulation Orders (TROs)

Local highway authorities can place temporary, experimental or permanent restrictions on traffic within their areas by way of a Traffic Regulation Order (TRO). Some of the most popular uses for TROs are restricting the movements of HGVs in residential areas, implementing parking restrictions and restricting traffic for the purposes of parades, street parties and other events. More recently, TROs have been used to create low-traffic neighbourhoods to restrict the flow of traffic in residential areas.

Drawbacks of using TROs

The making of TROs can be lengthy and costly, and there have been calls for reform of the advertising requirements to bring down the cost. The Transport Committee looked at this issue as part of their 2019 inquiry into pavement parking and made recommendations to government. 

Proposals to reform TROs

In 2022, the Department for Transport (DfT) published a consultation which included proposals to change the publishing requirements for TROs. This included:

• Requiring traffic authorities to publish digitised data about TROs in a standard format that can be accessed by anyone.
• Removing a requirement for the Secretary of State for Transport to approve special events orders in certain circumstances.
• Changing the requirements to publish information about TROs in certain formats.

The Government published the first part of their response to the consultation in January 2024, setting out that they planned to proceed with the proposed amendments to the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 as soon as Parliamentary time was available. No amendments were made, and the Government has not published the second part of their consultation response, prior to the dissolution of Parliament for the 2024 General Election.

In 2020, the DfT published a consultation on ‘Managing pavement parking’. One of the options was improving the TRO process. Again, no Government response to the consultation was published prior to the dissolution of Parliament for the 2024 General Election.