N Yorkshire’s Allocation from the Capability & Ambition Fund
TL;DR
N Yorkshire have won a relatively small amount of money from the Capability & Ambition Fund.
The central purpose of the fund is to provide training to create a skilled active travel workforce at councils across England. That workforce will deliver active travel projects to a consistently high standard.
Are N Yorkshire using the money to develop the expertise they so badly need? No.
Most of the funding is going on the detailed design of a Brayton to Selby scheme. The money will almost certainly be paid to consultants. If N Yorkshire’s track record is anything to go by, the scheme will never actually be built.
The rest of the funding is allocated to intelligent sensors, and to soft behaviour change measures like communications and marketing. Unless N Yorkshire first build decent infrastructure, marketing non-existent active travel routes is of no value.
N Yorkshire’s Allocation from the Capability & Ambition Fund
Earlier this week, Active Travel England (ATE) made an announcement about allocations to local authorities from the Capability Fund (or Capability & Ambition Fund, to give it its full title). The total amount available in 2022/23 is £32.9 million.
North Yorkshire’s allocation emerges from a council report in advance of a Business and Environmental Services meeting scheduled for 10th January 2023. The allocation is £220,780.
That allocation results from the self-assessment that N Yorkshire completed in September 2022. ATE designated them a Level 1 council.
Purpose of the Capability & Ambition Fund
The Capability & Ambition Fund is billed as creating a skilled active travel workforce able to deliver consistently high-quality active travel schemes across England.
In the Spokesmen Podcast, Chris Boardman said the fund is about creating in-house capability at local authorities, and reducing their dependence on consultants.
Among the funded activities is bespoke training for local authority officers and councillors. It also includes development of LCWIPs, and network design and planning.
N Yorkshire’s report says that behaviour change initiatives can also be funded, but:
‘Guidance recommends that authorities assigned to lower levels, particularly Level 1 (such as NYCC), direct the vast majority of their funding to capability-building activities.’
N Yorkshire report about the capability & ambition fund
What are N Yorkshire Using the Money for?
N Yorkshire do not appear to be using any of the money for capability-building, in the sense of training up engineers and planners in active travel.
They intend to split their funding as follows.
1) Brayton to Selby Route (£143,165)
Detailed design work on a Brayton to Selby route in the Selby LCWIP. This will almost certainly be outsourced to consultants. If so, it is not in the spirit of the Capability & Ambition Fund, since it is not building in-house expertise.
Further, experience shows that time and again N Yorkshire develop designs for active travel routes then fail to build them. If that happens yet again, the money will be wasted.
2) Data and Evidence Collection from Intelligent Sensors (£22,615)
N Yorkshire intend to buy three intelligent sensors to collect data on walking, wheeling and cycling.
One will be placed on the Brayton to Selby corridor, and the other two will gather data for an ATF4 bid. The money will cover 5 years of operation.
3) Behaviour Change Initiatives (£55,000)
The behaviour change initiatives involve paying salaries for:
- travel planning (£20,000)
- cycle training (£5,000) and
- communications and marketing (£25,000 + £5,000 materials). This will include social media and radio commercials
Level 1 authorities should spend the ‘vast majority of funding’ on capability-building. N Yorkshire’s report says that the amount being spent on behaviour change is 24.9% of the total funding, and claims that the other 75.1% is being used for capability-building and is the ‘vast majority’ of the funding.
The report includes further justifications for the behaviour change initiatives in para 4.2.
‘We must also focus behaviour change initiatives where infrastructure is being developed such as Harrogate (NPIF), Skipton (TCF) and Scarborough (Town Deal).’
para 4.2 of nycc’s report
The Otley Road cycleway was funded by NPIF in 2017, 5 years (FIVE YEARS) ago. Since then, N Yorkshire have built one small section of it to incredibly poor standards. There is no indication when Phase 2 will start, and no reason to believe that the design will be any more competent than on Phase 1.
There’s no point in focusing behaviour change initiatives on imaginary infrastructure. It is a waste of time marketing infrastructure that is not fit for purpose and doesn’t connect to anything.
Meanwhile there is a desperate need for technical expertise at NYCC, but N Yorkshire’s bid does not include any element of training.
Next Steps
The report says that the funding has to be accepted by 13th January 2023. The money has to be spent and delivery completed within 12 months.