Bicycles: Housing
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether she has had discussions with the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government about design standards in new dwellings to allow for sufficient securely enclosed cycle storage to accommodate at least one bike per head.
Answered by Simon Lightwood
Active Travel England (ATE) is an executive agency of the Department and a statutory planning consultee for new housing developments comprising at least 150 homes or 5 hectares in site size. In discharging this function, ATE makes recommendations to improve infrastructure and measures that will support active travel journeys.
Where there are no locally set standards for cycle parking, ATE’s planning team recommends that the standards in Table 11-1 of LTN 1/20: Cycle Infrastructure Design are applied to new dwellings. This seeks the provision of one secure and ideally covered cycle storage space per bedroom.
Criterion 9 of ATE’s planning application assessment toolkit – which helps to gather evidence and assess the active travel merits of new developments – promotes the provision of high-quality facilities including showers, lockers, changing rooms and drying areas for cyclists in non-residential settings.
It is for the relevant local planning authority’s enforcement team to address instances where a developer does not comply with active travel provisions secured through a planning application.
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