Cycling England, the body established by the Department for Transport in 2005 to “promote the growth of cycling in England by championing best practice and (by) channelling funding to partners engaged in training, engineering and marketing projects”, will cease to be from Thursday March 31. Due, in the main, to Governmental cost-cutting many of the bodies key functions will be brought back in-house by the Department for Transport who will now oversee funding (and distribution of funding) via the Local Sustainable Transport Fund (LSTF). Spending on cycling-based schemes – which naturally fall within the “sustainable transport” category – will now primarily be down to the whim of individual local authorities and be dependent of how willing those authorities are to jump through the hoops for submitting funding requests.
A small number of Cycling England’s most successful initiatives, including their flagship Bikeability scheme (described as “Cycling Proficiency for the 21st Century”) will be maintained. However fears remain that the idea of “hand(ing) power back to local authorities”, as Norman Baker, Under-Secretary of State for Transport, has put it will ultimately see the end to much of the joined-up thinking that has defined Cycling England for the last 6 years. Cyclo, for one, will miss you…
See below for Norman Baker’s introductory speech on the Local Sustainable Transport Fund.
