Government missing cycling and walking targets, warns watchdog

The government is not on track to meet its own targets for getting more people in England walking and cycling to improve their health.

A damning report, Active Travel in England, by the spending watchdog the National Audit Office (NAO) has found that, despite the government spending more than £2bn on so-called ‘active travel’ infrastructure, it is well behind on its ambitions to make active travel the natural choice for shorter journeys, or parts of longer ones, by 2040.

The government’s aim is for 50% of shorter urban trips to be walked or cycled by 2030, and 55% by 2035. It is also working to double the amount of cycling from 2013 to 2025, increasing the proportion of primary age children who walk to school to 55% by 2025, and to have an average of 365 walked ‘stages’ of travel per person a year by 2025.

It includes within this ambitions to get more people ‘wheeling’, or where someone is using a wheelchair or mobility scooter as part of their mobility. A wheeling or cycling stage is where someone walks or cycles as part of an overall trip.

More active, and less sedentary, lifestyles can help with a range of health conditions, including musculoskeletal and cardiovascular health, mental health, and obesity and diabetes, among others.

Between 2016 and 2025 the government, through the Department for Transport (DfT), will have spent around £6.6bn on active travel interventions, the NAO said.

“However, DfT does not yet know if the schemes delivered by local authorities to date have been of good enough quality and does not have a plan in place to track the benefits of its active travel investment,” it warned.

“More than half (56%) of local authorities – who play a significant role in delivering interventions – have low capability and ambition to deliver active travel projects, which has affected the quality of active travel interventions delivered with government funding to date,” it added.

During the pandemic, the DfT launched a £250m fund to support the rapid delivery of active travel schemes, the NAO pointed out.

“While designed to help facilitate social distancing as well as increase rates of active travel, some local authorities found it challenging to build schemes quickly and to engage their communities during this time, which led to poor implementation and some locally controversial schemes,” it said.

It urged the department to review its objectives for 2025 and beyond, set Active Travel England “stretching but achievable” targets, and work with others in government “to develop a more stable funding environment for local authorities delivering active travel interventions”.

The NAO added: “Active travel schemes have the potential to deliver significant health and environmental benefits. However, DfT knows little about what has been achieved through its past spending and is not on track to achieve most of its objectives.”