York humiliated over failure to deliver on walking and cycling schemes

Last summer every council in England had to complete a ‘self-assessment’ on its progress on active travel. City of York Council gave itself a ‘glowing’ rating of 3 out of 4, says the York Cycle Campaign.

“But since then Active Travel England - the Government agency responsible for making walking, wheeling and cycling the preferred choice for everyone to get around - has demoted York to level 1 (second from bottom of the five possible levels),” a spokesperson for the campaign group said.

“As a result the city is now severely limited in the active travel funding the council is eligible to apply for and the type of projects they are expected to be capable of.”

In a letter from Active Travel England understood to have been received by the council on February 7 inviting it to bid for a fourth round of active travel funding, it was suggested that York would be likely to get just £367,000.

The maximum it can bid for is 1.3 million, Yok Cycle Campaign says – and it is very unlikely to get that.

Higher-rated councils, however, are likely to be able to bid for ambitious walking and cycling projects costing tens of millions of pounds.

York Cycle Campaign members at York Minster last year (Image: Supplied)

York Cycle Campaign, which recently published its own 42-point manifesto to transform transport in York, says the downgrading of the council’s active travel rating has come on the back of a record of poor delivery.

It says that since July 2020 the council has been awarded more than £1 million to spend on active travel schemes, but has ‘barely managed to spend any of the cash or progress any of the schemes’.

“The council commissioned a civil engineering consultancy with no known expertise in active travel to draw up designs,” the campaign group says.

“This ‘heavy duty’ approach resulted in designs that required demolition of buildings to make space for cycleways, and construction of a new bridge over the river and railway line. Not surprisingly costs escalated fifteen-fold or more, making the active travel schemes pretty much unviable.”

York Cycle Campaign’s Andy Shrimpton said cycling levels in York had fallen by over a third since 2014.

“This demotion (from level 3 to level 1) is damaging for the city and will make it far harder for York to meet our active travel targets and give people the transport choices that they so badly need,” he said.

The cycle campaign group even claims the council included ‘false information’ on its active travel self-assessment.

“The council claimed that it had not installed or proposed any transport schemes which didn’t meet the latest Government guidance on active travel,” said Kate Ravilious. “However, York Cycle Campaign have identified 19 schemes and proposals that were not compliant with the latest guidance.”

These included the Tadcaster Road sustainable transport scheme, a traffic calming scheme at Burton Stone Lane, cycle route improvements in Nunnery Lane and Nunthorpe Grove and a temporary traffic regulation order in Coppergate, she said.

The measures failed to comply with government guidance on things as basic as the width of cycle lanes, she said.

A council spokesperson insisted that while Active Travel England had 'assessed us at a different level' (ie 1 rather than 3) that did not amount to York being downgraded.

The spokesperson also ‘strongly refuted’ the claim that the council had included false information in its self-assessment submission.

"Our ... submission accurately reflected the position of our Active Travel Programme and the schemes contained within it, in line with our understanding of the information Active Travel England were requesting." the spokesperson said. 

Pete Kilbane, deputy leader of the Labour opposition group, said the downgrading of York’s active travel status from 3 to 1 was shocking.

“It means that York will find it much more difficult to get government funding for walking and cycling schemes in future because we cannot be trusted to deliver more complex schemes,” he said.

But the council spokesperson insisted: “We are investing £2m in infrastructure, much of which is £1.2m of CYC funding complementing the funding from Active Travel England. 

"We have also started work on Tadcaster Road, which has seen £1.4m from WYCA (West Yorkshire Combined Authority) walking and cycling improvements. We are also preparing a bid for additional support from the Department for Transport’s Tranche 4 Active Travel Fund.

“The York Outer Ring Road upgrade proposals include a new orbital cycleway extending from Rawcliffe to Earswick, providing a £5m investment in active travel along that route, with a future opportunity to extend further east to North Lane in Huntington in-line with proposed residential developments."