Housing: Construction

(asked on 23rd March 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of the recent report from the Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation on car-dependency and new housing developments; and what steps he is taking to help ensure that new housing developments have easy access to public transport provision.


Answered by
Stuart Andrew Portrait
Stuart Andrew
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
This question was answered on 28th March 2022

The Government has taken, and is taking a number of steps to make sure that developments are easily accessible by public transport. We have set out in the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) that transport issues should be considered from the earliest stages of plan-making and development proposals, so that opportunities to promote walking, cycling and public transport use are identified and pursued. The NPPF is clear that significant development of new homes should be focused on locations which are or can be made sustainable, through limiting the need to travel and offering a genuine choice of transport modes.

Last year, the Government published the Transport Decarbonisation Plan, which highlighted the principles of low carbon transport that should apply in spatial planning. We are also supporting the delivery of an update to Manual for Streets, the Government’s guidance on street design which ensures that when considering the design of streets in housing and other development, pedestrians, cyclists and public transport users should be at the top of the hierarchy.

As we set out in the Net Zero Strategy, through our programme of changes to the planning system we intend to review the NPPF to make sure it contributes to climate change mitigation and adaptation as fully as possible. One of our Levelling Up missions is also that local public transport connectivity across the country will be significantly closer to the standards of London on service levels, fares and ticketing.

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