The group emphasises that, in the rush to build new homes, too many developments are being built without adequate public transport or even footways, leading to traffic congestion, pollution and unhealthy lifestyles.

The new checklist is designed to enable local authorities, housing developers and neighbourhood groups to easily identify car dependent housing plans and make improvements that promote more sustainable travel.

“Our country desperately needs more homes, but these must located and designed to ensure that residents do not need cars to live a full life,” said the checklist’s lead author Tim Pharoah.

“When housing is built on green fields, far from jobs, shops and services, with inadequate public transport and poor pedestrian and cycle links, residents are forced to drive for almost every journey.

“With traffic and air pollution blighting neighbourhoods, and transport being the UK’s main contributor to climate change, banishing the scourge of car dependent housing is long overdue.”

The checklist identifies several key elements that make up a sustainable housing development. These include:

• A location within or closely connected to an existing settlement that has a clear centre
• A welcoming environment, not dominated by car parking
• Local facilities easily accessible without a car
• Frequent public transport services in place from day one of occupation

By considering these and further criteria, checklist users can rate a housing plan as ‘Red’, ‘Amber’ or ‘Green’ for how well it will avoid car dependency.

Welcoming the checklist, CIHT’s Sustainable Transport Panel chair Lynda Addison described it as “an important contribution to the radical changes needed in the way that homes and transport are designed” to ensure that people can choose to live more active lives.

“This complements the forthcoming advice on ‘Better planning, better transport, better places’ that is about to be published by CIHT in partnership with TPS and the RTPI,” she said.

(Photograph: Stagecoach)