£32.9 Million Capability Fund
Active Travel England has today announced £32.9 million for local authorities from the Capability Fund. It could fund up to 1,300 jobs.
The purpose of the Fund is to train and retain engineers and planners.
‘The Capability Fund will support local authorities across the country to train and retain local engineers and planners, creating a skilled active travel workforce able to collaborate effectively with local communities and conduct high-quality engagement and consultation sessions.’
active travel england press release
In addition, the funding will deliver specialised training to drive up skills and ensure consistent, high-quality schemes across England. That will give people truly attractive travel choices.
Chris Boardman is quoted as follows:
‘If we want millions more people to walk, wheel and cycle to schools, shops and workplaces, we need to give them what they need to make the switch.’
‘Delivering schemes that offer an attractive choice takes technical skill, local knowledge, and community involvement. Survey after survey has shown that people want the choice to be able to use the car a bit less and would love their kids to have more transport independence, so we aim to ensure they are at the heart of creating the right solution for their area. 2023 is the year Active Travel England will start to make that happen.’
chris boardman
Funded Activities
Funded activities include:
- bespoke training for local authority officers and local councillors
- development of Local Cycling & Walking Infrastructure Plans
- network design and planning
- feasibility studies
- public engagement/consultation and co-design
- data and evidence collection
Is It Really a New Fund?
The press release says the fund is ‘launched today’ (2nd January 2023), but the Capability Fund is not new. Allocations to local authorities were published on 1st February 2022. The funding announced today is a new round, for the financial year 2022/23.
It’s part of Active Travel England’s existing budget – the £2 billion over 5 years that was announced in 2020.
Spokesmen Podcast
Chris Boardman discussed the Capability Fund with David Bernstein and Carlton Reid on the Spokesmen Podcast.
Boardman said that the emphasis is less on encouraging people to get about by active travel, and more on enabling them to do so. Some of that is political and some is psychological, but a lot of it is capability behind the scenes.
That technical aspect means developing an army of engineers and officers who are capable of delivering to a consistently high standard. This fund makes a start on that. It is designed to give local authorities in-house capability, and to reduce their dependence on consultants.
Boardman said that there will be other announcements this year, all designed to make sure that councils have a pipeline of schemes ready to go forward. Active travel will become a mainstream part of transport.
There is a caveat: this only applies to councils that want to do this. That leaves open the possibility that authorities like North Yorkshire may be left behind.
‘This is about choice. If there’s a local authority or an entire region that has no interest in increasing active travel, then good luck to them. And we will not be forcing anybody to work, but we won’t do things badly. So, to use the overused cliche, we will work with the willing and create examples at such a scale that they become unignorable, and that’s already happening.’
chris boardman
The Capability Fund programme will go ahead with those authorities that want to do it.
‘By the Spring we hope that we’ll have a package of training for all authorities to help them develop their capabilities.’
chris boardman
Boardman stressed the importance of consistency, so that wherever you are if you see a sign for a walking or cycling route you know you’re going to have a good experience.
The way to get people to ride a bike every day is to make it the easiest choice, and feel safe. Safe, convenient routes as part of a network are the foundation.
More on Adapting Funding to Different Local Authorities
‘Our support is proportionate and targeted, and there’ll be more on this and then in the next few months, but a local authority who has no trained officers, doesn’t know how to conduct consultations, but is rocket keen to do it, then we’ll help them with training and with schemes that they can win at from where they’re at, at the moment, and we’ll try to help them grow as fast as possible.’
‘For those that are already, like Greater Manchester to Birmingham, and the West Midlands in particular, who are already on the journey and already have people in place, have the capability to deliver and have learned a lot of the lessons, we’ll just say, hey, crack on, you know the standards, we’ll check you’re meeting those standards, but crack on, and tell us what you need. Because we have to do it.’
‘If we’re going to deliver government’s targets of 50% of all journeys cycled or walked by by 2030, then we’re going to have to work intensively with those that are already capable, and we’re going to have to work where the concentrations of people are, but that doesn’t mean that other areas that are just turning to this will get left behind, they absolutely won’t.’
chris boardman