Welsh Government spent £218m to get more people walking and cycling but it's not working
Welsh Government has spent more than £200m to get people walking and cycling but activity rates have dropped or remained static. An Audit Wales report has looked into the government's ambition to increase 'active travel' in Wales.
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 Fund, established in 2018, helps local authorities develop and deliver improvements to active travel infrastructure and related facilities like adding cycling and walking paths. This fund or equivalent expenditure by local authorities increased significantly between 2018-19 and 2023-24, from £20 million to £46 million.
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Total expenditure in the period was £218 million with another £65 million allocated by Welsh Government to its key active travel initiatives in 2024-25.
But Audit Wales says 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.
They added: "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 (Active Travel) 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."
Auditor General Adrian Crompton said: "The Welsh Government needs to reflect on why, in over a decade, the Active Travel (Wales) Act and the arrangements to support delivery have not yet had the desired impact. Various factors influence active travel behaviour across a range of policy areas.
"The importance of being able to put value for money to the test through strengthened monitoring, evaluation, and reporting, reflects a recurring theme from my wider audit work. Without better supporting evidence, the risk is that doing more of the same, including in how funding is prioritised, may simply produce the same results."
Dr Dafydd Trystan, Chair, Active Travel Board, said: "Today’s comprehensive report, by Audit Wales, once again highlights the challenges facing Welsh Government and its delivery partners to meet our collective active travel ambitions. Many of the findings reiterate and reinforce the nine recommendations contained in our own report, published last month, which examined the implementation of the Active Travel Delivery Plan between April 2023 and March 2024.
“We welcome Auditor General, Adrian Crompton’s stark words that invite Welsh Government to reflect on ‘why, in over a decade, the Active Travel (Wales) Act and the arrangements to support delivery have not yet had the desired impact.
“Wales’ ambition to become an active travel nation is, without question, the right one. Its recent levels of funding can also be widely applauded. But Welsh Government can no longer ignore mounting evidence that its methods to meet that ambition are not where they need to be.
“The good news for Welsh Government is that the themes of this report reflect ours, which means that the recommendations we have laid out in our recent report towards successful delivery are sound. This includes changing the way it spends current funding and putting in place mechanisms, like improved data collation, in order to evidence significant modal shift.
“The Active Travel Board remains committed to working with Welsh Government and local authorities, and is hopeful that a collective redoubling of efforts will drive the behaviour change we all seek that will lead to healthier, more sustainable communities across Wales."
Aberconwy MS Janet Finch-Saunders said: “Back in July, I raised this exact concern: the Welsh Government is squandering significant amounts of money on its Active Travel schemes.
“Since 2018, the figure for people cycling at least once a month has fluctuated between 8% and 10%, showing absolutely no discernible upward trend, and in that time Welsh Government have managed to spend £218m.
“It is an utter shambles and a scandal. Yet another waste of the public purse on a pointless vanity project.
“The idea itself has merit, and I appreciate any plan that encourages people to be active and travel sustainably. However, like with all Welsh Government projects, they are poorly implemented and maintained.
“As the report highlights, the core issue stems from the project's failure to integrate effectively with broader policies and initiatives. Furthermore, the expansion of infrastructure has not been paired with a sufficiently impactful campaign to increase public awareness or promote the behavioural shifts needed for actual change.
“I will be bringing this up in the Senedd for discussion with the Welsh Government to try and understand what changes will be made to ensure that public money is being spent prudently. The amount of waste from the Government would almost be laughable if it wasn’t so infuriating.”
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