What LTN 1/20 requires at a site access

LTN 1/20 changes what a site access should look like, and the change that matters most is the corner. Cycle Infrastructure Design expects the point where a vehicle crosses a footway or cycle track to be designed so the driver turns slowly and yields, which in practice means tight corner radii, a continuous footway across the access, and no sweeping bellmouth that lets a car turn in at 20 mph. The guidance sits alongside Manual for Streets rather than replacing it, and the tension between the two is where most highways negotiations on a site access actually happen.

The guidance is not statutory. It is national guidance issued by the Department for Transport, it is a material consideration, and Active Travel England applies it directly when it comes in as a statutory consultee on larger applications.

The status of the guidance in decision making

LTN 1/20 applies in England and is the reference document for cycle infrastructure design. Its weight in a planning decision comes from three routes: the development plan's own active travel policies, the National Planning Policy Framework's support for prioritising walking and cycling, and the consultation response of the highway authority or of Active Travel England.

Active Travel England is a statutory consultee on applications above set thresholds, broadly 150 or more dwellings, 7,500 square metres or more of floorspace, or sites of 5 hectares or more. Below those thresholds the local highway authority carries the assessment, and its own design guide may or may not have caught up with the national document.

Where the two conflict, say so in the transport evidence rather than quietly following the local guide. An officer who reads an access designed to a 1990s adoption standard with no explanation will assume the designer did not know about LTN 1/20.

Core design principles applied to an access

The guidance sets out that cycle infrastructure should be coherent, direct, safe, comfortable and attractive. Applied to a single site access, those principles reduce to a small number of questions.

Does the access maintain the continuity of the footway and any cycle track along the main road, or does it interrupt them? Does a person cycling along the main road have to give way to vehicles turning into the site? Does the geometry make a driver slow to a speed at which they can see and stop for someone crossing? Is the crossing point where people actually walk, or has it been set back to suit the swept path?

The guidance provides two assessment tools for answering these questions formally: the Cycling Level of Service tool for links, and the Junction Assessment Tool for junctions. Running the Junction Assessment Tool on the proposed access and presenting the scores is the clearest way to evidence that the design was tested rather than drawn.

Corner radii and vehicle speed at the crossing point

Corner radius controls turning speed more directly than any other element of an access design. A large radius lets a driver turn without slowing, which moves the conflict point to a place where neither party is looking.

Two distinctions matter in the drawing. Kerb radius is what you draw. Effective radius is what the driver experiences, and it is larger wherever there is a wide carriageway to swing into, a setback kerb line, or space that vehicles can overrun. Design to the effective radius and check it with a swept path analysis for the largest vehicle that will actually use the access regularly, which for a residential scheme is normally the refuse vehicle.

Where an occasional large vehicle needs access, the answer is usually an overrun area rather than a larger radius: a strip in a contrasting, slightly raised material that a refuse vehicle can track over once a week and a car will not cut across daily. Set that out in the transport evidence with the swept path drawing attached, because a highway officer asked to accept a tight radius wants to see the largest vehicle tested.

Continuous footway and footway crossovers

A continuous footway carries the footway surface, level and material across the mouth of the access, with the vehicle ramping up and down to cross it. It communicates priority through geometry rather than through signs, and it aligns with the Highway Code expectation that drivers give way to people waiting to cross at a junction.

The details that make it work are consistent.

• Footway material and colour run through unbroken; no change of surface at the access point.
• Ramps sit within the access throat, not within the footway, so the walking surface stays level.
• Corner radii are tight, typically at the low end of the range, so vehicles are already slow at the crossing.
• Tactile paving is used sparingly and only as the relevant guidance directs, because over-provision confuses the message.
• Drainage is resolved across the ramp rather than by a channel across the walking line.

Where the local highway authority will not adopt a continuous footway, the fall-back is a conventional footway crossover with radii kept as tight as the swept path allows and the crossing point brought forward rather than set back.

Cycle priority across a bellmouth

If a cycle track runs along the main road past your site, the access has to deal with it. The choices are to carry the track across the access at track level with priority, to bend the track out and give way to the side road, or to bring cycling back into the carriageway before the junction and back out after it.

The first is what the guidance prefers and is the hardest to get adopted. The second reduces the level of service and adds delay. The third is generally the worst outcome, because merging and diverging at a junction mouth is where collisions concentrate.

State which option you chose and why, and show the alternative you rejected. A Transport Assessment that presents one access layout with no explanation of the options tested is an invitation for the consultee to propose their own.

Where the guidance conflicts with adoption standards

Local adoption standards were mostly written to prioritise vehicle movement, and several of their requirements pull against LTN 1/20 directly.

The visibility row is the one to fight first, because splay requirements drive the loss of frontage hedgerow and boundary walls more than anything else. Manual for Streets derives stopping sight distance from observed speeds rather than the posted limit, so a speed survey on the frontage is often the lowest cost evidence in the whole transport submission.

Evidencing compliance in the submission

Set out the access design so a consultee can check it without redrawing it. That means a dimensioned access drawing showing kerb and effective radii, a swept path analysis for the design vehicle, a visibility splay drawing keyed to a measured speed survey, and the Junction Assessment Tool output with the scores explained.

For a smaller scheme this material sits inside a Transport Statement rather than a full assessment, and the thresholds that decide which document you need are covered in trip thresholds that trigger a Transport Assessment. Internal layout beyond the access, including gradients and turning within the site, follows separate conventions set out in private drive geometry: gradients, widths and turning.

Agree the access principle at pre-application stage with the highway authority, in writing, before the layout is fixed. Redesigning an access after the site layout is committed usually costs plots, and that is a conversation nobody wants to have at week eight.

This is general guidance, not legal advice; check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it.

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