Home Zones Guidance Consultation
Foreword
Deputy Minister for Enterprise, Transport and Lifelong Learning
I am very pleased to launch this consultation document, which I believe has the potential to change the way we view our streetscape in Scotland. Home Zones give the people of Scotland a choice about the way their streets are used and provide communities with a real opportunity to influence how their neighbourhoods are developed.
Home Zones are about shared spaces. They will be designed not just to allow the passage of motor vehicles, but so that all road users, pedestrians and cyclists as well as drivers can share the road space. Streets will be safer, greener, friendlier and more attractive, encouraging both social interaction and child's play to be part of the normal use of the street. In other words, Home Zones provide the opportunity to create neighbourhoods around the needs of the communities and people of Scotland rather than around the needs of traffic.
However, while practitioners will find this Guidance of immediate use, we recognise that it will only be through application, development and feedback that the document's true value can be established. We want to learn from experience, good and bad, and have therefore initiated a two-year consultation period during which you are formally invited to apply the document's contents and provide comments and suggestions. It can then be modified in the light of experience to provide maximum benefit for all.
I heartily commend the Home Zone guidance to you and look forward to the feedback you provide following its use and application.
Lewis Macdonald
Deputy Minister for Enterprise, Transport and Lifelong Learning
Scottish Executive
August 2002