Recommendation 25

The NAO’s analysis identified that there had been 36 different central government funds for active travel since 2016, some of which had multiple funding rounds. These funds often had different conditions and bidding requirements which local authorities must navigate to access funding for their active travel schemes. They also often had short deadlines for submissions and for delivering a scheme once funding is provided.57 We received written evidence from Leicester City Council which set out that the competitive nature of funds meant that local authorities must bid to secure as much funding as possible within a given window. It told us that local authorities that either lacked the resource or experience to construct bids were placed at a disadvantage, and that smaller authorities may lack the resource required to formulate competitive bids.58 In addition, it told us that developing bids is time-intensive, which was often compounded by very short bidding windows. Leicester City Council gave the example of Tranche Four of the Active Travel Fund which it said authorities were notified of on 1 January 2023 with a deadline for submitting bids for funding of 24 February 2023.59 We have therefore recommended that DfT, along with other departments, examine whether the number of grant schemes and their requirements can be simplified to encourage more local authorities to bid for them.