Better evidence needed to track progress and assess value for money.
‘Active travel’ describes walking and cycling, possibly combined with public transport, for everyday journeys like to or from a workplace or school, or to access health, leisure or other services and facilities. It is differentiated from walking and cycling solely for leisure. The Active Travel (Wales) Act 2013 [opens in new window] aims to increase active travel rates and places duties on the Welsh Ministers and local authorities.
The Welsh Government has allocated £65 million to its key active travel initiatives in 2024-25, with the Active Travel Fund the largest component. However, the fuller picture of Welsh Government and wider public services expenditure on active travel is not clear.
The Active Travel Fund, established in 2018, helps local authorities develop and deliver improvements to active travel infrastructure and related facilities. Annual Active Travel Fund or equivalent expenditure by local authorities increased significantly between 2018-19 and 2023-24, from £20 million to £46 million. Total expenditure in the period was £218 million.
Despite this increased spending, and a new wide-ranging delivery plan [opens in new window], the Welsh Government remains a long way from achieving the step change in active travel intended through the Act. The limited information available suggests active travel rates have not improved in recent years, with headline walking rates below pre-pandemic levels. In 2022-23, 51% of people said they walked at least once a week for active travel purposes and 6% cycled. The figure for walking compares with 60% in 2019-20 while cycling rates have remained broadly static.
The report highlights various issues and areas for improvement, including around target setting, the extent to which active travel has been integrated across wider policies and programmes and prioritised locally, national leadership arrangements, capacity issues in local authorities, and the approach to and prioritisation of funding. It also emphasises that the building of physical infrastructure has not been accompanied by a strong enough focus on awareness raising and behaviour change.
Alongside this, approaches to monitoring and evaluation do not currently go far enough to enable robust tracking of progress or an overall assessment of value for money. The Act’s reporting requirements are not being met consistently and a Welsh Government review of the Act is overdue. The report emphasises the importance of the Welsh Government now delivering with its partners on the new delivery plan. This includes work on a new monitoring and evaluation framework and a new assessment and funding framework to support delivery.
