Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what the sources of funding available are for promoting journeys made on foot from (a) the Government, (b) local authorities and (c) other sources in each of the last five years.

The primary source of funding for walking initiatives in the past five years has been the Local Sustainable Transport Fund. The 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 over the five years of the Local Sustainable Transport Fund, 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).

In addition to this, all cities in receipt of the Department’s Cycling Ambition grant programme needed to demonstrate how their proposed designs would benefit walkers as well as cyclists. To support this, the Department worked with the Department of Health to make £1.2m in funding available to ensure walking is considered alongside the wider Cycling Ambition Grant programme. This funding has been shared between Birmingham, Cambridge, Leeds, Manchester and Norwich.

Local authorities are also welcome to participate in the Department’s School Award Scheme, operated by Modeshift. This scheme promotes walking and cycling to schools and is benefitting from £840,000 between 2014 and 2016.

All funding is routed via local authorities, and it is their responsibility to identify any local contributions needed to deliver schemes in their area. The Department therefore does not hold information on what additional funding is available via local authorities or other sources.