Recommendation 9

In June 2023, the NAO found that the latest data showed little progress had been made against the targets set by DfT. In 2021, DfT was close to only one of its targets – to increase the percentage of short journeys in towns and cities that are walked or cycled, which was just under 46%. However, this this may reflect changes to travel patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic which appear not to have been sustained. For the other three objectives, levels of activity were lower than they were when DfT first set active travel objectives in 2017.13 For example, between 2017 and 2021, average annual walking activity reduced from 343 stages per person per year to 279 stages, when DfT’s target is 365 stages per person per year by 2025. We therefore asked DfT whether it thought that it would meet the targets it had set. DfT told us that it had raised its ambition to increase active travel very significantly in the last five years and that its objectives to 2025 were deliberately ambitious. It explained that it had set its targets at a “very, very stretching level” and that it thought that the progress recorded in the NAO report probably understated the progress it expected to make. DfT told us that data for 2021 were likely to have been affected by the pandemic and that the data for 2022 was expected to show more progress.14 On 31 August, DfT published its statistics for 2022. These showed some improvement in rates of walking, although there was not a return to pre-pandemic levels, and the proportion of short journeys walked or cycled remained close to the 2025 target.15 However, rates of cycling and walking to school showed little new progress. DfT told us that it could not say with confidence that the targets will all be met, but that it was “looking very hard at the way we can secure the maximum benefits”.16