Active travel: Government programme off-track as funding reductions hold back progress, says committee report

The Government is not on track to meet objectives to increase rates of active travel by 2025. In a report published today, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) warns that funding cuts made this year by the Department for Transport (DfT) could hold back objectives to increase active travel, including cycling and walking. The report further warns that the impact of £2.3bn in funding for active travel infrastructure remains unclear.

DfT’s efforts to increase active travel have seen disappointingly slow progress. Objectives include a doubling of cycling rates, and a 6 percentage point increase in the proportion of children walking to school. There has been no sustained increase in cycling rates, and fewer children now walk to school than when targets were set. In March 2023, DfT announced a £233m reduction in dedicated active travel funding up to April 2025. The progress of Active travel objectives could be affected by funding reductions, despite DfT’s suggestion that funding has not been a key issue in its failure to achieve targets.

The report also warns that the Government has not done enough to understand the impact and benefits of the £2.3bn in taxpayers’ money it has spent on active travel infrastructure between 2016 and 2021. Too little is known about the quality of the infrastructure that has been built. DfT has an incomplete understanding of what has been built because the majority of schemes have cost less than the amount required to monitor or evaluate them. The PAC is calling on DfT to lay out its plans to evaluate active travel interventions by December.

The report calls for local authorities to be provided with greater certainty about the funding available for active travel to enable them to invest in and deliver long-term, ambitious active travel interventions. The PAC’s inquiry heard that councils are being held back from delivering successful interventions by considerable uncertainty in available funding, which is available through multiple routes, often short-term, and provided at late notice.

DfT has also not yet taken essential steps to properly integrate active travel into the public transport network, for example enabling people to safely walk to bus stops or take their bike on the bus. The PAC is concerned that a lack of available or secure bike parking, or safe paths, may discourage people from cycling or walking part of a journey.

Dame Meg Hillier MP, Chair of the Committee, said: “The Government itself estimates that every pound invested in active travel reaps around £4.30 in benefits, in health, in air quality, in decarbonisation. If true, these are significant levels of potential value for taxpayers’ money to be realised. But close monitoring is required to understand what works and why in active travel investment, and coherence and stability of funding is crucial should these schemes be given a chance to succeed. Our inquiry found these sadly lacking.

“The Government’s executive agency Active Travel England is off to a good start, but needs firm backing for it to maintain momentum. Local authorities also require closer working and support to deliver successful schemes. Billions in taxpayers’ money appears to have been parachuted in by DfT on active travel without its impact properly tracked. Without the evidence-based, collaborative and holistic approach now needed, the Government’s ambitions in this area are likely to continue to go into reverse gear.”

PAC report conclusions and recommendations 

Active Travel England has made good early progress but it is still early days for the new organisation. DfT set-up Active Travel England (ATE) in August 2022 to deliver its walking and cycling strategy and to address long-standing issues such as the need to improve the quality of active travel infrastructure and local authorities’ capability to deliver. The establishment of ATE is a positive development and it has already made good progress. For example, the proportion of cycle scheme designs submitted by local authorities that comply with national guidance has increased by 14 percentage points due to improvements in training sessions and design surgeries held between ATE and local authorities, and ATE beginning to review planning applications in June 2023 when its new role as a statutory consultee in the planning process came into effect. But it has taken the establishment of a new body to begin to make a difference on active travel. Despite fiscal pressures across government, it is important that positive momentum is maintained and ATE is adequately funded and supported.

Recommendation 1:  DfT should review what ATE has achieved in its first 12 months in operation and whether it has adequate funding and support to deliver its active travel objectives and maintain momentum as it continues to develop. This should include reviewing the available capacity within its different functions and if this is sufficient for it to have impact.

DfT is not on track to meet its objectives to increase rates of active travel by 2025. DfT told us that its targets to increase active travel were deliberately ambitious. They include objectives to double rates of cycling and to increase the proportion of children walking to school by 6 percentage points. But progress has been disappointingly slow. There has been no sustained increase in cycling rates and, in some cases, for example the proportion of children walking to school, levels of activity are lower now than when the targets were set. The existing national measures that DfT uses to track progress on cycling rates are too high level to capture the impact of local investment accurately. Although DfT suggested that funding has not been a key issue in the failure to achieve its targets, we are not convinced that progress against DfT’s active travel objectives will be unaffected by the decisions made by the department to reduce funding. DfT states that it can no longer promise to deliver all 33 actions in Gear Change due to funding constraints and the shifting priorities of Ministers, but that it would focus on the activities that could have the greatest impact on increasing active travel.

Recommendation 2: DfT should include in its Treasury Minute response:

• its review of its objectives for active travel in England, setting out what it expects to achieve with the funding now available for active travel to 2025;
• how it plans to improve the monitoring of progress against its objectives. This should include better measures that can track progress on cycling rates where there has been local investment.

DfT has not done enough to understand the impact and benefits of the £2.3 billion of taxpayers’ money it has spent on active travel. DfT spent £2.3 billion funding active travel infrastructure between 2016 and 2021, but it knows too little about the quality of the infrastructure that has been built. Local authorities are only required to monitor or evaluate schemes that cost more than £2 million. Yet the average grant per project in the most recent tranches of the Active Travel Fund was £750,000. This has resulted in DfT having an incomplete understanding of active travel infrastructure, as the majority of schemes have cost much less than the amount required to be monitored or evaluated. DfT’s approach to measuring the wider impacts of active travel investment is also underdeveloped. We welcome ATE's commitment to investing in evaluation and to support local authorities to collect robust and consistent data without making it over-burdensome. ATE is exploring new methods for data collection and has a dedicated data analysis team to bring together local data.

Recommendation 3: DfT should, by December 2023, update the Committee on progress with:

1. a)its plans to evaluate active travel interventions and how it intends to use findings from its evaluation activities to inform its ongoing and future active travel activity and investment decisions;
2. b)how it intends to comprehensively identify and measure the benefits of active travel across all government policy areas; and
3. c)how ATE will improve the collection and standardisation of data from active travel schemes.

DfT’s communications to the public have not been enough to help tackle perceptions that active travel is unsafe or to encourage more people to take part. People’s perception of the safety of active travel is as important as actual physical safety. There is significant public concern around safety and this remains a substantial barrier to getting more people cycling and walking. We are not convinced that DfT’s messaging around the positive changes that have been made to improve safety, such as revisions to the Highway Code, or the benefits of active travel have been communicated effectively to the general public. There are also concerns about the impact on safety of new forms of travel such as e-scooters. DfT accepts that there is a need for greater clarity around the role of e-scooters, including a better legal framework. With the proliferation of e-scooters being used for both leisure and commuting, in and beyond the 23 current trials of rental schemes, there is a pressing need for better advice and guidance from DfT for the public and stakeholders.

Recommendation 4: DfT should, by December 2023, set out to the Committee how it will lead a proactive and coordinated approach with other stakeholders to: better promote the benefits of active travel; identify and address safety concerns; and encourage more people to participate in active travel.

DfT has not ensured that active travel schemes are sufficiently joined-up with wider transport infrastructure, for example enabling people to safely walk to bus stops or take their bike on the bus. DfT recognises the importance of integrating active travel with other forms of transport but has not yet taken the steps needed to create a joined-up transport network. We are concerned that a lack of available or secure bike parking, or safe paths, may discourage people from cycling or walking part of a journey. DfT claims that it has prioritised building cycle lanes and infrastructure that segregated cyclists from other road traffic instead of integrating active travel with other transport modes, for example enabling bikes to be taken on buses or trains. ATE expects the bulk of progress in achieving DfT’s active travel objectives to be delivered by increased walking, particularly people walking part of their journey before talking another form of transport. Buses and trams increase the number of walking trips taken because people often walk the first part of their journey to reach a bus or tram stop. Investment in public transport – such as buses, trams and trains – must go hand-in-hand with investment in active travel to allow people to access them and encourage people to walk to stations and bus or tram stops. ATE is working with local authorities to build their planning capability to ensure that active travel is fully integrated into their local plans. It is essential for DfT to ensure that wider transport schemes properly integrate active travel into the public transport network.

Recommendation 5a: DfT and Active Travel England ATE should, by April 2024, develop a clear and consistent approach for ensuring greater integration of active travel infrastructure with the public transport network.

1. b)In its Treasury Minute response, DfT should set out how, and by when, it will increase the number of public transport stops that can be safely accessed by foot, in both urban and rural areas.

Local authorities are being held back from delivering successful active travel interventions by the considerable uncertainty in the funding available for schemes. Since 2016, funding for active travel has been provided to local authorities through more than 36 active travel related funding streams. Local authorities must apply to multiple funding streams separately and each will have different bid requirements and timetables, often with very short deadlines for submissions and even shorter deadlines for delivering a scheme once funding is provided. Funding is often available in the short-term or provided annually, rather than through multi-year settlements and this instability is not conducive to delivering large or innovative schemes that would have a significant impact on active travel rates. Authorities that either lack the resource or experience to construct bids are placed at a disadvantage and the burden of applying for multiple funding streams or at short notice can be exacerbated for smaller authorities. DfT recognises the need for fewer, more coherent funding schemes. 

Recommendation 6: DfT, working with other departments including HM Treasury, should set out in the next six months how and when local authorities will be provided with greater certainty about the funding available for active travel to enable them to invest in and deliver long-term, ambitious active travel interventions. This work should include an examination of whether the number of grant schemes available for active travel can be reduced or simplified.

DfT has not set out how it plans to expand its Bikeability programme and increase the rate of children and adults receiving cycle safety training. Bikeability is an important part of how DfT promotes active travel to children and adults and ensures people have the confidence to cycle safely. DfT plans to continue to fund the programme, but it has not yet agreed a business case for the programme. The amount of funding that will be provided in 2023-24 is still uncertain, but DfT expects that it will be less than anticipated in the 2021 spending review, due to the current challenging fiscal environment. DfT told us that its planning for how to expand the Bikeability programme is ongoing. Once plans are in place, it will take time to expand the programme and to find and train the instructors needed. We are concerned that this lack of planning may lead to delays in delivering the training, particularly if funding is provided at short-notice and instructors cannot be found in time. DfT has committed to reviewing the Bikeability programme over the next 12 months with the intention of producing a simpler product that is easier for instructors to deliver. 

Recommendation 7: As an urgent priority, and within three months, DfT needs to set out a clear plan for its Bikeability Programme with a revised business case, including the funding it will make available to the programme over the remainder of the investment period to March 2025.