Accessibility Planning partnership

What is accessibility planning?

Accessibility can be summarised as the relationship between:
- The location of key facilities, services and opportunities;
- The means and characteristics of the population that needs or desires to access them;
- And the travel options available to facilitate this.
Accessibility planning is a way of local authorities working in partnership with other organisations to identify and solve local accessibility problems, assessing whether people can easily reach the services they need - such as employment, education, healthcare, food shopping and leisure facilities - and identifying action to take if they cannot.
The concept of accessibility planning was introduced in the Social Exclusion Unit’s report Making the Connections (Feb. 2003) which set out the relationship between available transport and travel options and social exclusion, and put forward a cross-government strategy for planning to improve access to essential services.

Accessibility planning aims to promote social inclusion by tackling accessibility problems experienced by those in disadvantaged groups and areas and by focusing on access to those opportunities that are likely to have the most impact on life chances.

Improving accessibility to jobs and essential services helps to meet national and local objectives including promoting social inclusion, economic regeneration and welfare to work, reducing health inequalities, and improving participation and attendance in education.

The Accessibility Strategies for Greater Nottingham and North Nottinghamshire

Accessibility is as much about providing services and developments in more accessible places and ways and at more accessible times, as well as making improvements to walking, cycling and public transport networks.

To ensure that the accessibility planning process is tied into planning and transport programmes, an Accessibility Strategy has been developed as an integral part of the second round of Local Transport Plans covering the period 2006/07 to 2010/11 (LTP2).
The Accessibility Strategy for Greater Nottingham has been prepared jointly by Nottingham City Council and Nottinghamshire County Council. And the Accessibility Strategy for North Nottinghamshire has been prepared by Nottinghamshire County Council.

Accessibility planning resources

Nottingham City and Nottinghamshire County Councils were awarded Beacon status in 2008-2009 for their work on improving accessibility to key services.
The following links provide further information about accessibility planning and the Local Transport Plan process, including the Greater Nottingham and North Nottinghamshire Accessibility Strategies and case studies of local accessibility planning work:

Partnership Zone