Glossary
- Higher tier authority
- Local authorities with elected councillors (county councils, metropolitan bodies and unitary authorities); so called because they are a higher level of government than district councils in counties with two tiers of government.
- Highway authority
- In most places, a local highway authority is either a county council, a metropolitan council or a unitary authority. Transport for London is the highway authority in the capital. Highway authorities are responsible for producing the local transport plan and for managing existing or proposed new local roads in the area.
- Highways Agency
- An executive agency of the Department for Transport, responsible for the construction, maintenance and management of the trunk road and motorway network.
- Historic parks and gardens
- Historic parks and gardens are designed landscapes which have been identified by English Heritage as worthy of protection and are assigned a grade of I, II* or II. They are listed on the Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest. They have no additional statutory controls, but Government planning policy says local planning authorities should protect them in when preparing development plans and determining planning applications
- Housing density
- The amount of housing in a given area. Density is used in planning for new residential development to measure the amount of new housing to go on land. Government policy requires local planning authorities to plan for new housing to be at a density no lower than 30-50 dwellings per hectare. In London, density is measured in terms of 'habitable rooms' per hectare, and local planning authorities in London require densities that are in practice usually much higher than the minimum range. Government policy also defines density as 'net' density, which includes garden space, access roads and car parking, but not major roads or large public open spaces. Government policy on town centres also encourages a higher density of retail and office development, but does not lay down a minimum density at which such development should take place, or prescribe how the density should be measured.