Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what support his Department offers to children who wish to walk, cycle or use a scooter to travel to school.

The Department would like to see more children using sustainable ways to travel to school. To encourage more children to cycle we have extended our commitment to Bikeability cycle training to 2015/16 and have recently announced a new pilot scheme to enhance the Bikeability cycle training programme to provide additional training activities to schools and parents. As of March 2013, more than 1 million children have had Bikeability training, and in addition, between April 2013 and March 2015 we expect more than 616,000 further training places to be delivered.

The Department is also providing £184,000 for the expansion of the Modeshift STARS school award scheme. The scheme supports increases in sustainable travel to school through a variety of different initiatives ultimately leading to the development of a sustainable school travel plan. In addition, almost two thirds of the projects featured in the Government’s £600m Local Sustainable Transport Fund programme feature the promotion of walking, cycling and / or scooting to schools. One scheme in particular is dedicated to walking to school. The scheme is led by Durham County Council in partnership with Living Streets, and received £4.791m to encourage an increase in walking in eleven local authorities across England.

To help make our roads safer around schools we have made it easier for local authorities to implement 20 mile per hour zones and limits, and have provided around £15 million through the Community Linking Places Fund for traffic free and traffic calmed links in communities, including around schools.

Furthermore, the Department’s draft Cycling Delivery Plan, published on 16 October, proposes an ambition to increase the percentage of school children aged 5-10 years walking to school to 55% by 2025.