I am pleased to introduce Leicestershire County Council's new guidance document 'Highways, transportation and development'. This latest version has been adopted as County Council policy from December 2007.

Provision for traffic and transport is fundamental to new development and the County Council has a long history of working with local planning authorities and developers to help ensure that proper provision is made. Our previous guidance Highway Requirements for Development has for many years played an important role in that process by bringing comprehensive details together in one document. With recent developments in national and local policies the time was right to review our guidance, in close consultation with all stakeholders, and bring it fully up to date.

There are many detailed changes but the key to this new document is the flexibility now allowed to ensure layouts reflect local character and circumstances. We hope this flexibility will be welcomed and will assist in delivering high quality development for Leicestershire.

I commend our new document to you.      

This new, fully-revised version of the guide ‘Highways, transportation and development’ is the result of 12 months of close partnership working between the city and county councils.

For the first time, the guide has been extensively updated to incorporate issues affecting the city, as well as the latest guidance from national government.

This joined-up approach is recognised as good practice, so it’s not surprising that other local authorities are already expressing interest in our guide.

When we embarked on this project, the aim was to make this web-based document as user-friendly as possible – and I hope that we’ve done that. I also hope that Leicester and Leicestershire’s guide to ‘Highways, transportation and development’ will prove to be an invaluable tool for planners, developers and householders throughout the city and the county.