Welsh Government’s ‘failing’ active travel policy has cost £218m, says auditor

Martin Shipton

The Welsh Government’s much trumpeted policy of “active travel” has failed to engage the people of Wales, with fewer participating now than in 2018, despite nearly £220m having been spent encouraging them to take part.

A damning report from Audit Wales suggests serious mistakes have been made and a new delivery plan needs to be implemented, with better evidence made available to track progress and assess value for money.

“Active travel” describes walking and cycling, possibly combined with public transport, for everyday journeys like to or from a workplace or school, or to access health, leisure or other services and facilities. It doesn’t include walking and cycling solely for leisure.

The Active Travel (Wales) Act 2013 aims to increase active travel rates and places duties on the Welsh Ministers and local authorities.

The Welsh Government has allocated £65m to its key active travel initiatives in 2024-25, with the Active Travel Fund the largest component. However, the fuller picture of Welsh Government and wider public services expenditure on active travel is not clear.

The Active Travel Fund, established in 2018, helps local authorities develop and deliver improvements to active travel infrastructure and related facilities. Annual Active Travel Fund or equivalent expenditure by local authorities increased significantly between 2018-19 and 2023-24, from £20m to £46m. Total expenditure in the period was £218m.

‘Step change’

The report says: “Despite this increased spending, and a new wide-ranging delivery plan, the Welsh Government remains a long way from achieving the step change in active travel intended through the Act. The limited information available suggests active travel rates have not improved in recent years, with headline walking rates below pre-pandemic levels. In 2022-23, 51% of people said they walked at least once a week for active travel purposes and 6% cycled. The figure for walking compares with 60% in 2019-20 while cycling rates have remained broadly static.”

The report highlights various issues and areas for improvement, including around target setting, the extent to which active travel has been integrated across wider policies and programmes and prioritised locally, national leadership arrangements, capacity issues in local authorities, and the approach to and prioritisation of funding.

It also emphasises that the building of physical infrastructure has not been accompanied by a strong enough focus on awareness raising and behaviour change.

Alongside this, approaches to monitoring and evaluation do not currently go far enough to enable robust tracking of progress or an overall assessment of value for money. The Act’s reporting requirements are not being met consistently and a Welsh Government review of the Act is overdue. The report emphasises the importance of the Welsh Government now delivering with its partners on the new delivery plan. This includes work on a new monitoring and evaluation framework and a new assessment and funding framework to support delivery.

‘Prioritising’

The report states: “The Welsh Government has set active travel targets without Wales-specific data to establish the baseline position. It is uncertain whether the targets are achievable. The new active travel delivery plan is wide-ranging but includes some actions outstanding from the 2016 plan. “Various national policies and initiatives integrate commitments to active travel, but this does not always play through to local decisions. There also appears to be variation in the extent to which local authorities are prioritising active travel and related investment. Leadership and oversight is complicated by the involvement of multiple stakeholders and some lack of clarity around responsibilities amid changing remits.

“The Welsh Government’s active travel team is small, and while Transport for Wales’ team has grown over the past three years there are capacity issues in local authorities.

“The annual funding cycle and uncertainty about future funding can make some local authorities reluctant to take on more ambitious multi-year schemes.

“It is difficult to assess the extent to which active travel networks have improved over time from the network maps alone, but the pace of change appears too slow currently to achieve the ambitions. We heard that routes put forward for funding by local authorities are not always in the best areas, or adequately connected, to facilitate modal shift but Transport for Wales has developed a tool to improve prioritisation.

“The Welsh Government and Transport for Wales are developing an overall monitoring and evaluation framework, but it has been a long time coming.

“The quality of information reported by local authorities varies considerably, including baseline information against which to assess impact. The Welsh Government’s annual reporting has been limited in scope. Current arrangements for monitoring and evaluating Active Travel Fund expenditure do not enable an overall assessment of value for money.”

‘Reflect’

Auditor General Adrian Crompton said: “The Welsh Government needs to reflect on why, in over a decade, the Active Travel (Wales) Act and the arrangements to support delivery have not yet had the desired impact. Various factors influence active travel behaviour across a range of policy areas.

“The importance of being able to put value for money to the test through strengthened monitoring, evaluation, and reporting, reflects a recurring theme from my wider audit work. Without better supporting evidence, the risk is that doing more of the same, including in how funding is prioritised, may simply produce the same results.”

A Welsh Government spokesperson said: “We would like to thank the Audit Office for its report. We will be considering the recommendations and will respond formally in due course.”

Dr Dafydd Trystan, Chair of the Active Travel Board, and independent body which aims to advance active travel initiatives across Wales, said: “Today’s comprehensive report, by Audit Wales, once again highlights the challenges facing Welsh Government and its delivery partners to meet our collective active travel ambitions.

“Many of the findings reiterate and reinforce the nine recommendations contained in our own report, published last month, which examined the implementation of the Active Travel Delivery Plan between April 2023 and March 2024.

“We welcome Auditor General, Adrian Crompton’s stark words that invite Welsh Government to reflect on ‘why, in over a decade, the Active Travel (Wales) Act and the arrangements to support delivery have not yet had the desired impact’.

“Wales’ ambition to become an active travel nation is, without question, the right one. Its recent levels of funding can also be widely applauded. But Welsh Government can no longer ignore mounting evidence that its methods to meet that ambition are not where they need to be.

“The good news for Welsh Government is that the themes of this report reflect ours, which means that the recommendations we have laid out in our recent report towards successful delivery are sound. This includes changing the way it spends current funding and putting in place mechanisms, like improved data collation, in order to evidence significant modal shift.

“The Active Travel Board remains committed to working with Welsh Government and local authorities, and is hopeful that a collective redoubling of efforts will drive the behaviour change we all seek that will lead to healthier, more sustainable communities across Wales.”