Apologies for double posting. Having read back through my original post, I realise it's a little long winded so I'll try to cut it down.
Basically, the current URL of my site would be:
http://www.domain.com/websites/directory
Using .htaccess, I can rewrite the URL to leave out 'websites' and leave the URL as follows:
http://www.domain.com/directory
However, if the user enters the first URL, I want to redirect them to the second. The aim is to redirect people to the second URL without the redirection error that appears.
I would also like the trailing slash at the end of the URL to be forced.