Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 8
8
Rejected
DfT established specific objectives for increasing active travel rates by 2025
Conclusion
DfT set out its most recent objectives for active travel in 2022. These are to: • increase the percentage of short journeys in towns and cities that are walked or cycled from 41% in 2019 to 46% in 2025; • increase people’s annual walking activity to 365 stages per person per year; • double rates of cycling from 0.8 billion stages in 2013 to 1.6 billion stages in 2025; and • increase the percentage of children aged 5 to 10 who usually walk to school from 49% in 2014 to 55% in 2025.12 8 C&AG’s Report, paras 1.5, 3.9 and Figure 10 9 Qq 75, 77; C&AG’s Report, para 3.10 10 Qq 11, 30, 37; C&AG’s Report, para 1.10 11 ATE0010, Written evidence submitted by Living Streets 12 DfT, The second cycling and walking investment strategy (CWIS2), published 6 July 2022; C&AG’s report, para 3 Active travel in England 11
Government Response Summary
The government disagrees with the implicit recommendation to re-evaluate the active travel objectives, stating that these will be reviewed in the 2025 report to Parliament on CWIS 2 and revised in the third CWIS, with research commissioned to inform this process.
Government Response
Rejected
HM Government
Rejected
2.1 The government disagrees with the Committee’s recommendation. 2.2 As the Committee has noted in its report, the intention of the department was to set deliberately challenging objectives for active travel in the second statutory Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy (CWIS 2) and this was irrespective of the funding available. 2.3 The most recent National Travel Survey statistical release on walking and cycling, published on 30 August 2023, showed that the department is on track to achieve only one of the four objectives for active travel in CWIS 2 (that 46% of short journeys in towns and cities should be walked or cycled by 2025). 2.4 The department does not consider it to be necessary to re-evaluate what it expects to achieve against these objectives by 2025. This is because it will be reviewed in the report to Parliament on CWIS 2 and revised objectives will be set within the third CWIS (both due in 2025). 2.5 To inform the report to Parliament and the third CWIS, the department has commissioned research on active travel funding for the first and second CWIS (from 2016 to 2025) and the outputs of that funding. Many of the funding streams within both CWIS periods are projections, based on a range of evidence. This research will more accurately measure how much money has been spent, and what was delivered against the projected outputs.