Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what funding his Department has allocated to Local Sustainable Transport Fund projects relating to journeys made on foot between 2012 and 2016.

The Local Sustainable Transport Fund is a £600m grant programme for local authorities that currently supports a range of sustainable transport projects across England. While this funding can be used for a range of transport interventions, many projects support walking either directly or as a secondary benefit (such as cycleways that can also be used by pedestrians).

Due to the varied nature of the individual projects and the range of transport modes benefitting, it is not possible to place a precise figure on the amount of Local Sustainable Transport Fund grant being spent directly on walking. However, the latest annual report for this programme suggests that around 20% of the funding in 2012/13 was spent on projects that directly benefitted walkers. We can therefore assume that between financial years 2011/12 and 2015/16 (which covers the entire span of the programme), approximately £120m will be spent on schemes that directly benefit walkers. This is a conservative estimate that does not consider projects where pedestrians are the secondary beneficiaries of a scheme, or projects that are 100% focussed on walking (such as Durham County Council’s ‘Walk to Schools outreach’ programme, which is receiving £4.8m in funding).

The current Local Sustainable Transport Fund will end in March 2015. For 2015/16, the Department has provided £64.5m in revenue funding to support the ongoing promotion of sustainable transport, including walking. This funding has been awarded to 44 projects, one of which (led by Durham County Council) is 100% focussed on walking. Applying the same 20% logic indicated above, we can assume that approximately £13m of this funding will go on schemes that will directly benefit walkers.