Mind the Adoption Gap: Bridging the Divide Between Planning Dreams and Highway Reality | Lunchtime webinar

Most council’s housing targets have doubled. NPPF updates have introduced new transport rules: vision-led planning, changing parking standards, continuous pavement references, placemaking guidance and pavement parking bans. The pressure on local authorities to deliver more and better housing schemes has never been higher.

Yet, housing and transport remain trapped in separate silos, despite being two sides of the same coin. This fragmentation creates conflict at the finish line, where planning visions clash with technical adoption standards, leading to delays, cost increases and compromised street quality.

This webinar seeks to bridge that gap, offering voices who are delivering streets from vision to adoption. Streets that are functional and emotional. We will provide examples of how to lock in quality at scale be it, navigating the technicalities of continuous footways, the "Asphalt vs. Block Paving" maintenance debate, or the pathway from planning consent to highway adoption.

Key themes:

• The 2026 NPPF Shift: Navigating new rules on vision-led transport and pavement parking.

• From Planning to Adoption: Solving the friction between high-quality design and long-term maintenance.

• Getting your hands dirty: A deep dive into the engineering of street design schemes.

• Scaling Success with street design codes: How to move from one-off "exemplar" schemes to raising the bar on every single street.

Speakers

Chair: David Milner, Managing Director Create Streets.

Welcome: Nicholas Boys Smith MBE, Founder Create Streets.

Sharing their expertise with us are;

Jack Mayhew, Cheshire West & Chester and Tom Noble, Create Streets: Better Streets Everywhere. Street Design Codes, examples from Cheshire and Surrey;

Becky Phillips-Melhuish, Active Travel England: Bridging, Planning and Adoption. Experiences from Lincolnshire and Active Travel England;

Lewis Hubbard, Lewis Hubbard Engineering: The Devil is in the Detail. A deep dive into the engineering of street design schemes;

Victor Baron, Paris City Hall, Greening & Biodiversity: Across the Channel. Paris street transformation under Anne Hidalgo; and

Annabel Keegan, Streets for a Healthy Life. An update on Homes England's Streets for a Healthy Life.