ABSTRACT The Isaac Newton Telescope (INT) Photometric H-Alpha Survey (IPHAS) is a 1800deg2 survey of the Northern Galactic Plane, reaching down to r' 21. We demonstrate how the survey can be used to (1) reliably select classical T Tauri star candidates and (2) constrain the mass accretion rates with an estimated relative uncertainty of 0.6 dex. IPHAS is a necessary addition to spectroscopic surveys because it allows large and uniform samples of accretion rates to be obtained with a precise handle on the selection effects. We apply the method on a region of 7deg2 towards the Hii region IC1396 in Cepheus OB2 and identify 158 pre-main-sequence candidates with masses between 0.2 and 2.0M and accretion rates between 10-9.2 and 10-7.0Myr-1. We find a power-law dependency between the stellar mass and the accretion rates with a slope of α= 1.1 ± 0.2, which is less steep than indicated by previous studies. We discuss the influence of method-dependent systematic effects on the determination of this relationship. The majority of our sample consists of faint, previously unknown, low-mass T Tauri candidates (56per cent between 0.2 and 0.5M). Many candidates are clustered in front of three bright-rimmed molecular clouds, which are being ionized by the massive star HD206267 (O6.5V). We discover a spatio-temporal gradient of increasing accretion rates, increasing Spitzer infrared excess, and younger ages away from the ionizing star, providing a strong indication that the formation of these clusters has been sequentially triggered by HD206267 during the last 1Myr. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT