One hundred and fifty units and Active Travel England

Active Travel England became a statutory consultee on planning applications in England on 1 June 2023, and the residential trigger is 150 units or more. There are two other triggers that catch non-residential schemes: 7,500 square metres or more of floorspace, and a site area of 5 hectares or more. Cross any one of them and the local planning authority must consult, and the response will be an assessment of how well people can walk, wheel and cycle to and through your development.

This is a different duty from consulting the local highway authority, which applies at any scale and is concerned with the adopted network, access geometry and capacity. The active travel consultee is looking at the quality of the walking and cycling offer, measured against national design guidance.

When the consultation duty applies

The duty sits with the local planning authority, through the statutory consultee arrangements in the Development Management Procedure Order. It is triggered by the scale of the application rather than by its location, so a 160-unit scheme in a market town engages it just as a 160-unit scheme in a city does.

Count the units carefully. Outline applications with a maximum unit figure are assessed on that figure. Phased schemes are assessed on the application before the authority, not on the phase, so a single outline application for 400 homes delivered in four phases is one consultation at 400. Where a scheme is amended upward during determination and crosses the line, the authority should consult, and an applicant who increases unit numbers at the eleventh hour to improve viability can import a new consultee into the process.

Mixed use schemes can trigger on either the residential or the floorspace test, and the site area test catches low-density proposals that neither of the other two reaches. Check all three before concluding that the duty does not apply.

The consultee cannot refuse your application. It advises, and the weight its advice carries depends on the authority, though in practice an unresolved objection from a statutory consultee on a major scheme is a problem the case officer will want solved before writing a recommendation.

What the consultee assesses in a submission

The assessment looks at walking, wheeling and cycling, in that order of attention, and it works from national guidance rather than local standards. The cycle infrastructure design guidance published by the Department for Transport is the principal reference, with the street design manuals behind it.

Expect scrutiny of five things. Whether the site is connected to existing walking and cycling networks, and what happens at the point of connection. Whether routes within the scheme are direct, continuous and usable by someone pushing a buggy or using a wheelchair, rather than shared surfaces that resolve a conflict by ignoring it. Whether cycle parking is secure, covered, at ground level, accessible without steps or lifting, and in the quantity local standards require. Whether crossings of the internal and adjoining network are designed for people on foot and cycle rather than for traffic flow. And whether the scheme's trip generation assumptions are consistent with the infrastructure actually provided.

The last point is where submissions contradict themselves. A transport assessment claiming a high sustainable mode share, paired with a layout that gives cyclists a shared footway and 12 Sheffield stands in a basement, invites the response that the mode share is aspirational.

Documents that answer those questions

Most of the material should already exist in a major application. The work is in making it answer the consultee's questions explicitly rather than leaving them to be inferred.

A transport assessment with a dedicated active travel chapter: existing network audit, walking and cycling isochrones from the site to the facilities people actually use, the proposed network with route widths and gradients, crossing points, and the connection details at the site boundary.

A travel plan with measurable targets, a named coordinator, a monitoring regime and a review mechanism, rather than a statement of intent.

Drawings that show the active travel network as its own layer: a walking and cycling route plan, typical cross-sections for each route type, cycle parking layouts at a readable scale with dimensions and stand types, and the detail of any new crossing or tie-in to the adopted network.

Where the scheme crosses other thresholds at the same scale, the submission grows accordingly. A statement of community involvement becomes expected at larger scales, and the obligations and levy position changes with scheme size, as set out in our note on obligations and the levy at different scheme sizes.

Where a scheme sits just below the threshold

Designing to 149 units to avoid a consultee is a poor strategy, and it is transparent to everybody involved.

The authority will still apply its own policies on cycle parking, permeability and street design. The highway authority is consulted regardless. And a scheme that has clearly been trimmed to avoid consultation tends to attract exactly the scrutiny it was trying to avoid, from officers and from objectors.

There is a legitimate version of the same decision. Where 149 units is the right number for the site on density, viability or layout grounds, say so for those reasons and design the active travel provision properly anyway. The cost of good cycle parking and a direct pedestrian route is small relative to the scheme, and it answers local policy in any event.

Watch the reserved matters stage too. An outline permission below the threshold does not stop the authority applying its own standards when the detailed layout comes forward, and by then the land take for a proper route may no longer be available.

Local policy that applies similar tests at smaller scale

Below the national trigger, the same ideas arrive through local plan policy, and in some places they are stricter.

Cycle parking standards in local plans and parking standards documents commonly specify long-stay and short-stay provision per dwelling and per 100 square metres, with requirements for covered, secure, ground-level storage. In London the plan sets its own standards and the city-wide thresholds for referral operate separately, as described in our note on Greater London Authority referable thresholds.

Many authorities also apply a permeability or connectivity policy, a requirement for walking distance to a bus stop or local centre, or a design code with street types. Those are the policies that will decide a 60-unit scheme, and they tend to be assessed by the same officer who reads the consultee's response on larger schemes, so the expectations converge.

Responding to a holding objection

A holding objection is an invitation to amend, not a refusal. Treat it that way.

Read the objection for the specific deficiencies rather than the general tone. Deal with each in turn in a short technical note, with revised drawings where the point is a drawing point. Where you disagree, say why with reference to the guidance, because the guidance contains flexibility and the consultee applies judgement.

Three responses that work. Revising cycle parking from a basement store to a ground-level, covered, two-tier arrangement with a step-free route. Replacing a shared surface with segregated provision at the widths the design guidance sets out. Adding a crossing or a dropped kerb sequence at the point where the internal network meets the adopted highway, which is the most common single gap.

Then ask for the objection to be withdrawn in writing and make sure the officer has the withdrawal before the report is drafted.

Designing for the assessment rather than retrofitting

The least costly active travel provision is the one designed in at the masterplanning stage, because it needs land and the land has to come from somewhere.

Fix the movement network before the development parcels. Set the route widths, gradients and crossing points first, then fit the plots around them. Reserve the cycle parking footprint at ground level in each block rather than discovering later that the only space left is a basement. Check the gradients on every route against the design guidance, since a route that exceeds the recommended gradient is a route the consultee will question.

And run the assessment against your own scheme before submission. The consultee's criteria are published, so score the scheme yourself, fix what fails, and record the exercise in the transport assessment. An application that shows it has been tested against the criteria reads very differently from one that has not.

Illustrative example: a 180-unit scheme on the edge of a town, with a direct 3 metre wide shared-use path to the nearest secondary school, two-tier covered cycle stores at ground level in each block, and a new parallel crossing where the spine road meets the existing distributor. Those three items answered the bulk of the consultee's assessment. The example is illustrative.

Enter your postcode on PlanScope to see which reports a scheme at this scale is likely to need, then send the drafts for professional review.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Consultation thresholds and design guidance change, so check the current position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it.

PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.