Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (): I am pleased to
inform the House that the Department for Transport is to create a
new executive agency, Active Travel England (ATE), with its headquarters in
York. This builds on the government’s commitment to level up the
country and locate more Civil Service roles outside of London and
the South East, as well as its commitment to boosting cycling and
walking.
This government is investing a record amount in active travel to
help deliver our priorities for a healthy, safe and
carbon-neutral transport system. ATE will work to ensure that this,
and wider transport investment, is well spent, and will help
raise the standard of cycling and walking infrastructure.
ATE will manage the
national active travel budget, awarding funding for projects
which meet the new national standards set out in 2020. It will
inspect finished schemes and ask for funds to be returned for any
which have not been completed as promised, or which have not
started or finished by the stipulated times.
ATE will also begin to
inspect, and publish reports on, highway authorities for their
performance on active travel and identify particularly dangerous
failings in their highways for cyclists and pedestrians.
In these regards, the commissioner and inspectorate will perform
a similar role to
Ofsted from the 1990s onwards in raising standards and
challenging failure.
As well as approving and inspecting schemes, ATE will help local authorities,
training staff and spreading good practice in design,
implementation and public engagement. It will be a statutory
consultee on major planning applications to ensure that the
largest new developments properly cater for pedestrians and
cyclists.
ATE’s establishment
follows the government’s unprecedented commitment of £2 billion
for cycling and walking over this parliament and comes in the
wake of our ambitious Gear Change strategy
to transform active travel.
The agency will become fully operational later in 2022.
I am also pleased to confirm the appointment of Chris Boardman
MBE as the
first Active Travel Commissioner for England. He will take the
helm on an interim basis to spearhead the establishment of
ATE.
This underlines this government’s ongoing commitment to boosting
cycling and walking and to building back greener from the
pandemic.
