Better Connected

What the Government's New Transport Strategy Means for Planners, Developers and Communities

INTRODUCTION:

In April 2026, the government published a document that could quietly reshape how transport and planning decisions are made across England for the rest of this decade.

Better Connected: A Strategy for Integrated Transport is the Department for Transport's long-term vision for delivering simpler, more reliable and better joined-up journeys for people across England. It comes backed by over 40 fully funded commitments, supported by the £30 billion transport settlement secured in the 2025 Spending Review.

For most people, the headline story is about easier travel — tap-and-go ticketing across buses, trains and trams, live bus times in Google Maps, and a push to finally fix the fragmented, confusing transport experience that passengers have put up with for too long.

But for anyone working in planning, development or local government, there is a more significant story buried inside the strategy. Better Connected sets out a clear shift in how transport and land use planning are expected to work together — and it has direct implications for planning applications, Local Transport Plans, and the way new developments are expected to be designed and assessed.

This post explains what the strategy says, why it matters, and what it is likely to mean in practice.

What is Better Connected?

Better Connected is the government's first national integrated transport strategy for England. Published on 2 April 2026 by the Department for Transport, it sets out a shared vision for transport across England — covering roads, buses, trains, walking, cycling, and emerging modes such as shared mobility and micromobility.

The strategy was developed following extensive engagement with the public, transport workers, councils, businesses and transport organisations. Its core argument is straightforward: for too long, England's transport system has been planned and managed in silos — buses here, rail there, roads somewhere else — with passengers left to navigate the gaps between them. Better Connected sets out to change that, by placing the passenger journey — from door to door, using any combination of modes — at the centre of how transport is planned and delivered.

Alongside the strategy itself, the government also published updated Local Transport Plan (LTP) guidance on the same day. This is significant. Local Transport Plans are the statutory documents that local authorities use to set out their transport vision and justify funding bids. The new guidance means councils across England are now expected to update their plans in line with Better Connected's priorities — which in turn affects planning decisions in those areas.

The shift to vision-led planning — and why it matters

One of the most important threads running through Better Connected is its commitment to embedding vision-led transport planning at every level of government. If that phrase sounds familiar, it is because it echoes the changes introduced by the December 2024 NPPF update, which we covered in an earlier post.

Vision-led planning — sometimes called vision and validate — is the idea that transport planning should start with a clear picture of what kind of place is being created and how people should travel to and from it, rather than simply predicting car traffic and designing infrastructure around it.

Better Connected makes this explicit. The strategy commits the government to working with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to ensure vision-led principles are adopted at every tier of government, to shape our new towns and better align the spatial and transport planning systems.

In practice, this means the NPPF and local planning policy are now being pulled in the same direction as the national transport strategy. For developers and planning applicants, this creates a more consistent policy environment — but also a higher bar. Schemes that rely on prediction and provide logic, or that treat sustainable travel as an afterthought, are likely to face increasing resistance at both the local and national levels.

What the new Local Transport Plan guidance means

The updated Local Transport Plan (LTP) guidance published alongside Better Connected is worth understanding in its own right, because it directly affects the planning context in which development decisions are made.

A Local Transport Plan is a statutory document — that is, one required by law — which local authorities must produce under the Transport Act 2000. It sets out how the authority plans to manage and improve transport in its area. New government funding for local transport improvements is tied to having an up-to-date, compliant LTP in place.

The new 2026 guidance makes several significant changes to what LTPs must cover. Some of these are genuinely new requirements rather than recommendations. New requirements now include:

Approaches to integrated ticketing within the authority's area.

Accessibility and inclusion policies, including a new bus network accessibility plan.

A specific section on travel to school.

Policies on active travel — that is, walking and cycling — and micromobility (e-scooters and similar modes).

EV charging infrastructure planning.

A vision for bus services, including whether the authority is working towards bus franchising.

Annual transparency reports on highway maintenance.

Carbon impact reporting, which is now mandatory rather than optional. Authorities must use the government's Local Transport Quantifiable Carbon Guidance to forecast the carbon impacts of their transport programmes and report on them annually.

For developers, this matters because the Local Transport Plan is a material consideration in planning decisions — meaning it is one of the documents a planning officer will weigh up when assessing your application. A development that aligns well with the local LTP's priorities is in a stronger position than one that conflicts with them. As councils update their LTPs in line with the new guidance, the bar for what that alignment looks like will rise.

What Better Connected says about development and housing

Better Connected is not primarily a planning document, but it does make clear that transport and housing need to be much better joined up than they have been.

The strategy commits to integrating the approach to transport, housing and wider development across the system. This includes embedding transport considerations into the National Housing Delivery Fund, Transport for City Regions funding, and rail and road infrastructure programmes.

In plain terms: transport infrastructure is increasingly being used as a lever to unlock new housing development, and new housing development is increasingly being expected to demonstrate that it supports the transport vision for its area — not just that it can accommodate the cars it generates.

The strategy also strengthens the Network Management Duty — the legal obligation on local highway authorities to manage their road networks efficiently. Importantly, the updated guidance makes clear that walking, wheeling and cycling are now explicitly part of this duty and should be treated with the same priority as road infrastructure. This has practical implications for how highway authorities assess planning applications and what mitigation measures they require.

The commitments most likely to affect planning decisions

Of the 40-plus commitments in Better Connected, a handful are particularly relevant to anyone involved in the planning system.

A commitment to update traffic signs regulations to allow simplified zebra crossings at side roads. This gives local authorities the ability to introduce low-cost crossings that reinforce pedestrian priority at junctions — something that has previously been technically complex and expensive. This is directly relevant to development design, as pedestrian crossings are a common requirement attached to planning permissions for new housing or commercial schemes.

A commitment to improve walking, wheeling and cycling routes and strengthen cycle and rail integration. The strategy includes a target of 5,000 new walking, wheeling and cycling routes and 10,000 safer crossings over the next five years. Developers whose sites are near existing or planned routes will need to demonstrate how their proposals connect to and support this wider network.

A £24 billion commitment between 2026 and 2030 to maintain and improve motorways and local roads, including £2 billion per year by 2029/30 for local authorities to repair roads and fill potholes. While this is primarily a maintenance programme rather than a planning policy change, it signals significant investment in the road network that will affect the transport assessment context for developments over the next several years.

A £10 million Integration Innovation Fund and a £30 million digital twin programme, designed to help local authorities model and plan their transport networks more effectively. Digital twins — that is, computer models that simulate how a transport network functions in real time — are increasingly being used in transport assessment work and are likely to become more common in planning submissions as this programme rolls out.

An Accessible Travel Charter, to be developed in collaboration with disabled people, regulators and transport providers. Accessibility is already a consideration in transport planning, but a national charter is likely to set clearer expectations that feed through into planning guidance and Local Transport Plans.

What this means if you are making a planning application

The practical effect of Better Connected for anyone making a planning application is this: the policy environment in which applications are assessed is moving in a consistent direction, and it is worth understanding that direction before you design your scheme rather than after.

The key themes are:

Transport and land use need to be planned together from the start. Schemes that arrive at the pre-application stage without a clear transport vision are increasingly likely to be challenged.

Sustainable travel is now the expected baseline, not an optional extra. Walking, cycling, public transport access and EV infrastructure are all expected to be designed into new developments, not added on at the end.

Local Transport Plans are being updated to reflect Better Connected's priorities. If your development site is in an authority that is currently updating its LTP — which many are, following the April 2026 guidance update — it is worth finding out what their emerging priorities are, as these will affect the planning context for your application.

Carbon impact reporting is becoming mandatory at the local authority level. This is likely to filter through into how transport assessments are expected to report on carbon, beyond the current standard of trip generation and junction analysis.

A quick summary

Better Connected: A Strategy for Integrated Transport was published by the Department for Transport on 2 April 2026.

It sets a long-term vision for simpler, more reliable and better integrated transport across England, backed by over 40 fully funded commitments.

The strategy explicitly commits to embedding vision-led transport planning across all tiers of government, aligning with the approach set out in the December 2024 NPPF.

Updated Local Transport Plan guidance published alongside the strategy introduces new mandatory requirements for councils, including carbon reporting, accessibility plans and policies on active travel and EV infrastructure.

For developers and planning applicants, the strategy reinforces the direction of travel: transport thinking needs to start earlier, sustainable travel needs to be central to scheme design, and local policy context matters more than ever.

CLOSING PARAGRAPH:

Better Connected is a strategy document — which means its immediate practical effect is felt through the guidance, funding decisions and local plans that flow from it, rather than overnight changes to the planning system. But the direction it sets is clear, and it is consistent with the changes already embedded in the NPPF. For anyone involved in planning and development in England, understanding that direction is increasingly an essential part of getting applications right.

This post is intended as a general guide to planning policy. For advice specific to your project or application, always consult a qualified transport planner or planning consultant.