Traffic Sensitive Street Reviews play an important role in helping highway authorities manage their networks effectively, supporting decisions around street works, permit schemes and the management of disruption.
However, keeping Traffic Sensitive Street designations accurate and up to date can be challenging, particularly when authorities are working with limited resources and historic or incomplete traffic data.
Ahead of the LCRIG-hosted webinar ‘Transforming Traffic Sensitive Street Reviews with Rapid, Data Driven Network Modelling’ on 9 September 2026, we spoke to a member of the GeoPlace and Immense teams about the collaboration behind the session, the challenges authorities face when reviewing their networks, and how better access to street-level flow data can support a more efficient and evidence-based approach.
Q. What inspired you to come together to deliver this webinar, and why is this such an important topic for the highways sector right now?
A. We’ve been working with GeoPlace on how our flow data can support the analysis services they provide to authorities, and Traffic Sensitive Street Reviews kept coming up as an area where better data could make a real difference. GeoPlace already has the trust and relationships with authorities to apply this well, so it made sense to share what we’re learning together rather than us talking about the data in isolation. With DfT scrutiny on network registers increasing and authorities under pressure to do more with fewer resources, it felt like the right moment to put this in front of the sector.
Q. Why are Traffic Sensitive Street Reviews such an important part of managing the highway network, and what are some of the biggest challenges authorities are facing when carrying them out today?
A. Getting a Traffic Sensitive Street designation wrong has real consequences – it affects when works can take place, how permits are assessed, and ultimately how much disruption the public experiences. The challenge we hear about most from authorities is that reviews still rely heavily on local knowledge and outdated counts, because up-to-date, street-level flow data has historically been expensive or slow to get hold of. That makes it hard to defend designations with hard evidence, and reviewing a whole register regularly becomes a big manual undertaking.
Q. Your upcoming webinar focuses on taking a more data-driven approach to Traffic Sensitive Street Reviews. What does that look like in practice, and why is it becoming increasingly valuable for highway authorities?
A. In practice, it means giving authorities consistent, up-to-date flow data for every street in scope, not just the ones someone happens to flag for review. Our flow reports let GeoPlace screen the network quickly and highlight where a designation looks right, wrong, or worth a closer look – turning something that used to be slow and manual into a process authorities can run regularly and back up with evidence. GeoPlace has developed expertise and methods for processing raw count information from the authorities into a consistent format and this has also helped to streamline the approach to integrating this data with Immense’s platform and has enabled us to develop a more robust product. As registers come under more scrutiny and authorities are asked to justify decisions more rigorously, having that evidence ready to hand matters far more than it used to.
Q You’ll be sharing a case study from Suffolk County Council during the session. Without giving too much away, what can attendees expect to learn from it?
A. Without giving too much away, attendees will see how Suffolk used our data through GeoPlace’s analysis service to support a live review of their network register, including what the data revealed that their existing assumptions hadn’t picked up. It’s a good example of what’s possible when this kind of data is layered onto an authority’s local knowledge rather than replacing it, and we’ll walk through both the process and the practical outcome. We’ve subsequently used the approach elsewhere and we’ll also be looking to share some learnings on how these approaches can bring benefit across the country.
Q. If there’s one key message or practical insight you hope attendees will take away from the webinar, what would it be?
A. That this doesn’t have to be a huge undertaking, or hugely expensive. Authorities don’t need a major new system or months of setup, they can start using better flow data to sense-check their existing register through the services already available to them today, and build the evidence base up from there. And once they have that baseline, there are other areas in which the same data assets can add value to their highway management activities.
Q. Finally, who would benefit most from attending the webinar, and why is now the right time for highway authorities to explore this approach?
A. This is most relevant to anyone responsible for maintaining a street works register or managing permit schemes, network managers, street works teams, and anyone who has to defend Traffic Sensitive Street decisions when they’re challenged. With growing pressure on registers to be accurate and up to date, and with data that used to be hard to access now readily available, there’s less reason than ever to rely on guesswork.
Thank you to the GeoPlace and Immense team for sharing their insights with the LCRIG community.
To find out more and hear from GeoPlace and Immense directly, register for the upcoming LCRIG-hosted webinar, ‘Transforming Traffic Sensitive Reviews with Rapid, Data Driven Network Modelling’, taking place at 11am on Wednesday, 9 September 2026.