About us

New housing should be built so that residents can walk, cycle and use public transport to go about their daily lives. Transport for New Homes brings transport and planning together to make this vision a reality.

The Transport for New Homes Charter sums up our vision.

Anyone with a professional, academic or personal interest in transport and planning is invited to sign up to our newsletters.

Transport for New Homes is a community interest company.

The project

Our work combines visits to new housing developments with research into the planning and funding landscape behind them. We use our reports to call for change, both directly to politicians and through the media.

We have published three reports:

We also create tools including the Transport for New Homes Checklist, used by local authorities, developers and neighbourhood groups to identify and improve car-dependent housing plans.

In 2019 we ran the Transport for New Homes Awards in partnership with the Transport Planning Society.

Why the emphasis on transport to new homes?

Lifestyles. New homes are often seen as the province of planners but naturally transport plays a very important role in how people live, and how they go about their daily lives. At a time when there are real concerns about sedentary lifestyles, we wanted to see whether the places we are building enabled more walking and cycling. Equally there is concern about isolation with many people struggling to interact enough with others. We looked therefore for local facilities – local shops, employment, parks and community facilities – that you could walk to and meet people.

Access. People moving to new homes need access to employment and services. They need therefore good modern public public transport connections – frequent and good local buses, trains or rapid transit. Were these provided and how good were they? This was also part of our investigations.

Car domination and traffic. Congestion and air pollution caused by traffic are a grave concern, as is climate change, to which transport is the main contributor. Parking can also have an adverse effect on the public realm, taking up valuable space with views of car parks rather then gardens. We wanted to know whether new homes were predominantly car-based, generating more traffic and congestion, or whether they managed to carry through aspirations for ‘sustainable transport’, both in the new housing area itself and in the immediate area.

Non-drivers. We wanted to make sure that non-drivers of all ages were well catered for and that residents did not have to rely on a car for most activities.