Daniel Zeichner – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Daniel Zeichner on 2016-04-11.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what his Department’s current projections are for Government annual spending on the (a) Cycle City Ambition Grant, (b) Bikeability cycle training, (c) Highways England Funding, (d) Access Funds and (e) any other under the cycling and walking strategy programmes for each of the next five years.

Mr Robert Goodwill

The projected budgets for the next five years for the (a) Cycle City Ambition Grant, (b) Bikeability cycle training, (c) Highways England Funding and (d) Access Funds are as follows:

Much more widely, however, other Government funding streams will also contribute to projects which will deliver improved cycling and walking. Through the Local Growth Fund, an investment of at least £476m is planned by local enterprise partnerships for cycling infrastructure.

From the Integrated Transport Block funding, local authorities will use £194m to invest in cycling and walking.

Regarding highways maintenance, from 2018/19 the plan is to change the formula used to allocate local highways maintenance capital funding so that it also takes into account footways and cycleways as well as the roads, bridges and street lighting, which it is currently based on. Once implemented, around 9% of the funding for local highways maintenance will be based on footway and cycleway lengths and equates to £196m.

In addition, a record £6bn will be spent on tackling potholes and improving local roads between 2015 and 2021, which will benefit all road users, including cyclists.