What a Healthy Streets assessment has to cover

A Healthy Streets assessment is an indicator-based appraisal of the street environment in and around a development, submitted with the transport evidence on larger London applications. It is not a longer walking and cycling audit, and it is not a chapter of the transport assessment with a different title. Policy T2 of the London Plan 2021 asks applicants to show how a scheme will deliver improvements supporting the ten Healthy Streets indicators, and the assessment is the document that answers that in a form the Greater London Authority and Transport for London can mark.

Done late, it reads as a justification. Done early, it changes the layout.

What it is, and which schemes need it

The Healthy Streets approach sets out ten indicators describing what makes a street somewhere people will choose to walk, cycle and spend time. Policy T1 of the London Plan carries the strategic target for a large majority of trips in London to be made by walking, cycling and public transport, and Policy T2 is how that target reaches an individual application.

In practice the assessment is expected on applications referable to the Mayor, on schemes in opportunity areas and town centres, and wherever a borough's own policy asks for it. Transport for London's transport assessment guidance sets out what it wants to see, alongside an active travel zone assessment covering the routes between the site and the places people will walk and cycle to. Where a site sits in an allocation, the expectations are often set there as well, as we cover in what a London allocation changes.

Ask at pre-application which documents the borough and Transport for London want, and in what form. The answer varies more than it should.

The ten indicators and the evidence for each

Two of these are usually weak in submitted assessments. Shade and shelter gets a sentence about street trees with no canopy figure and no acknowledgement that a newly planted tree provides nothing for fifteen years. And places to stop and rest gets a statement that benches will be provided, with no plan showing where or how far apart.

Give each indicator a measured baseline, a measured proposed condition, and a drawing reference. That structure alone puts the document ahead of most.

Drawing the study area

The site boundary is not the study area. The assessment covers the streets within the site, the streets immediately adjoining it, and the routes from the site to the places people will actually go: the nearest stations and bus stops, the local centre, the schools and the open space.

A walking catchment of around ten minutes is the usual starting point, extended along the routes to any station or interchange beyond it. Cycling catchments are larger again. Agree the extent with Transport for London before the audit work starts, because redoing a street audit over a wider area is expensive and slow.

Be honest about the parts of the route you cannot change. An assessment that scores a junction poorly and then explains what the scheme contributes towards improving it is more credible than one that quietly stops at the red line.

Baseline audit and proposed condition

The work is fieldwork before it is anything else. Walk the routes, at different times of day, and record what is there rather than what the map shows.

The baseline should include footway widths at pinch points, pedestrian comfort levels where crowding is an issue, crossing provision measured against desire lines, seating and shelter, lighting, severance caused by traffic, surface condition, clutter, and the proportion of frontage that is active.

The proposed condition then shows what the scheme changes, separating three categories: what is delivered inside the site, what is delivered on the adjoining highway through works under section 278, and what is contributed towards off-site improvements the scheme does not itself build. Marking those three differently is important, because a document that credits the scheme with improvements it is only funding a share of will be marked down.

How it sits alongside the transport assessment

The Transport Assessment deals with trip generation, capacity, access and servicing. The Healthy Streets work deals with the quality of the environment those trips take place in. They share inputs and answer different questions.

Keep them consistent on three things: the mode share assumptions, the cycle parking provision against the London Plan standards, and the car parking figure. A Healthy Streets assessment claiming a walkable scheme sitting next to a transport assessment with generous parking is a contradiction an officer will raise.

The Travel Plan should pick up the measures that need managing over time: cycle parking maintenance, wayfinding, car club provision and the monitoring regime. Where a Health Impact Assessment is also required, the two documents overlap on physical activity and air quality, and they should cite each other rather than repeat each other.

Mitigation and the street works contribution

Mitigation on a Healthy Streets assessment is physical and mostly off the balance sheet of the building.

The measures that score well are new or improved crossings on desire lines, footway widening at pinch points, decluttering, continuous footways across side road junctions, tree planting with adequate soil volume, seating at measured intervals, cycle parking at the entrances people use, and lighting improvements on the routes to transport. A Green Infrastructure Plan can carry the planting and canopy elements, which also serve the shade indicator over time.

Secure them properly. Works within the highway go through a section 278 agreement with the highway authority, which has its own design approval and timetable, and off-site contributions go through section 106. Neither happens because a report recommended it.

Reporting format and drawings

Structure the report indicator by indicator. For each one: what the policy expects, the measured baseline, the proposed condition, the change, and where in the drawings it is shown.

Four drawings do most of the work. A study area plan with the routes and destinations. A baseline constraints plan marking pinch points, crossings, severance and clutter. A proposals plan showing the changes, coded by delivery mechanism. And a desire line overlay, which is the drawing that most often changes a layout, because it shows where people will cut across whatever you have designed.

Avoid a scoring table with no narrative. The numbers matter less than the explanation of what the scheme does and does not fix.

An illustrative case: a 320 home scheme beside a four-lane road, with the main pedestrian route to the station crossing at a signalised junction 180 metres from the natural desire line. The first assessment scored the junction and moved on. The revised scheme funded a new signalised crossing on the desire line through section 278, moved the main entrance to face it, and relocated the ground floor commercial unit to give active frontage on that route. The building did not change. The relationship between the building and the street did, which is the point of the exercise.

Enter your postcode on PlanScope to see which transport and street environment reports a London scheme is likely to need.

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