Accessibility and Accession Study

The Yorkshire and Humber Assembly appointed MVA in February 2008 to undertake a review of the Accessibility Criteria. The review was necessitated by the difficulties Local Authorities expressed in understanding and implementing the Criteria. These difficulties were noted over the course of several years through responses to the Annual Monitoring Report's data audits and a general lack of uptake of the Criteria. As the Criteria represent a key element of the now published Yorkshire and Humber Plan’s Core Approach (the Regional Spatial Strategy) it was felt that a technical analysis of the Criteria was important in order to ensure policy interpretation.

A major part of the review was to also ensure that the Criteria would be aligned with the DfT software program Accession. This program enables geographic analysis to determine the accessibility of locations to various services and populations. As such the project was also meant to ensure that Accession was able to implement the aims of the Accessibility Criteria. Whilst the project was undertaken with the intent to align to the Accession program, it is not the intention of YHA to suggest which programs Local Authorities should use to implement the Accessibility Criteria. It is expected that the key outcomes of this project should also provide guidance and technical advice as to what parameters need to be in place for the Accessibility Criteria to be undertaken, regardless of the program used.

The project consisted of inviting Accession users and Monitoring Officers to one of two workshops held in February 2008. These workshops helped to identify existing problems with the Criteria and any other barriers to using the Criteria. Based on these workshops, MVA produced a revised set of Accessibility Criteria taking into account the identified problems. The revisions enable the Criteria to be more easily used within Accession and provide guidance on how to undertake analysis with the program. Additionally MVA revised the Indicators found within the Annual Monitoring Report to better enable the measuring of accessibility for new developments. The ‘results’ were then disseminated to the participants in two further meetings, held in March and May 2008. Input received via email was also considered in developing the final report.

The final report includes both technical documents to provide guidance enabling Accesibbility Criteria to be implemented. The final report also provides explanation of the tables provided. As such the document provides both technical and explanatory details. The final report can be found below (divided into three documents to ease download restrictions).

If you have any questions or comments regarding this report, please contact Lyla Peter (Policy Officer – Research and Information) at lyla.peter@yhassembly.gov.uk or 01924 331 555.