Accessibility Strategy

In February 2003, The Government's Social Exclusion Unit published "Making the Connections: Final Report on Transport and Social Exclusion". The report examined the link between social exclusion, transport and the location of services, with a particular focus on access to those opportunities that have the most impact on life chances such as work, learning and healthcare.

The report recommended that a new framework of accessibility planning be built into Local Transport Plans for 2006-2011 and that Accessibility Strategies be produced.

The Merseyside Local Transport Plan (LTP) is produced by Merseytravel, Knowsley, Liverpool, Sefton, St Helens and Wirral Councils. The LTP Partnership have worked together with other partners to produce the Merseyside Accessibility Strategy.

Overcoming accessibility barriers to key opportunities and services such as jobs, healthcare and education is the most important issue for the second Local Transport Plan for Merseyside, in particular the need to tackle the high levels of worklessness experienced in many of Merseyside's communities.

The Merseyside Accessibility Strategy sets out:

• What the accessibility issues for Merseyside are.
• Where barriers to accessing services exist.
• How the Accessibility Strategy fits with key stakeholders respective agendas.
• The approach to be adopted to deal with specific accessibility problems.
• Potential funding streams.
• Priorities and suggestions for joint working with key stakeholders to overcome accessibility problems.
• The Accessibility Strategy also contains a detailed Action Plan for overcoming accessibility barriers in the initial stages of the strategy.

More detail coming soon