The political rows around London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone and the installing of low traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) both in the capital and around the country, have highlighted the governance dilemmas these initiatives present. To be successful, such potentially divisive policies must crucially be implemented in close collaboration with local authorities, rather than imposed from the centre, argue Geoff Dudley, David Banister and Tim Schwanen.

What is the purpose of Active Travel England (ATE)? On one level, the answer to this question might seem obvious. ATE, founded in January 2022, exists to promote active travel, such as cycling and walking, and to enable the implementation of schemes that facilitate active travel. The difficulty for ATE comes in balancing the degree to which it exists as a top-down enforcer and inspectorate, or as a bottom-up advisor and facilitator. The answers that ATE finds to this conundrum will play a significant part in determining the trajectory of active travel policy in England.

The top-down and bottom-up tensions are well illustrated by the announcement from the Department for Transport (DfT) and ATE in January 2023 of a Capability Fund (CF) amounting to £32.9 million to create a national network of active travel experts. Crucially, ATE relies on the local authorities to implement schemes, and the CF could be seen as an essentially bottom-up means to improve the expertise at the local level. ATE therefore states that the CF will provide resources for the bespoke training of local authority officers and councillors; the development of local cycling and walking infrastructure plans; network design and planning; feasibility studies; public engagement/consultation and co-design; data and evidence collection; and engagement with under-represented groups.

Crucially, Active Travel England relies on the local authorities to implement schemes

The question for ATE is in how these CF funding responsibilities are interpreted. This is particularly true in politically sensitive areas such as training in network issues and public engagement. Where controversial schemes are at stake, advice from ATE could be perceived as a top-down means to create uniformity among local authorities and compatibility with national policy strategy. Concern about the future of bottom-up forces is heightened by the degree to which ATE was founded as a top-down enforcer, and the Government’s handling of highly controversial schemes such as low traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs).

Central-local tensions

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 caused a drastic fall in the use of public transport, and a rise in cycling and walking. The Government wished to encourage social distancing and instructed local authorities to reallocate road space for significantly increased numbers of cyclists and pedestrians. As part of new statutory Network Management Duty Guidance, the Government suggested that more side streets could be closed to through traffic in order to create LTNs, which are designed to remove motorised traffic from residential streets, while leaving them permeable to pedestrians and cyclists. LTNs were not in themselves a new concept but had now become a central plank of the Government’s strategy for combating the pandemic and promoting active travel. However, the inherent character of LTNs had the potential to make them highly divisive within local communities and create major governance problems.

In order to finance new schemes, the Government created in May 2020 an Emergency Active Travel Fund (later the Active Travel Fund) amounting to £220 million in total for the first two tranches. A few months later, in its Gear Change report which set out its strategy for cycling and walking, the Government declared that the quality of cycling infrastructure installed on roads must radically improve. In order to achieve this aim, ATE was set up to examine all applications for funding, and refuse any that were not compliant with new national standards. ATE would also inspect finished schemes and ask for funds to be returned for any which had not been completed as promised, or which had not started or finished within a stipulated time frame. ATE’s enforcement responsibilities were reinforced by a requirement to publish annual reports on highway authorities, grading them on their performance. Overall, the Government’s intention was for ATE to perform a similar function to the inspectorate OFSTED in the education sector. However, it should be noted that Ofsted has a more autonomous status than ATE as it is a non-ministerial department that reports directly to Parliament. In contrast, ATE is an Executive Agency of the DfT. This means that ATE is given responsibility for delivering executive functions which require high levels of expertise that are not available in the DfT itself. ATE therefore has direct relations with local authorities that are distinct from those of the DfT. In addition, ATE has its own Commissioner and Board, which will give it an arm’s-length relationship with the DfT, although crucially the DfT remains responsible for framing policy. Consequently, ATE is essentially an agency that deals with implementation, rather than being a policy making body. In turn, the degree to which it is required to carry out DfT policy can heighten the top-down and bottom-up tensions for ATE.

The Government’s top-down strategy caused many local authorities to become concerned that they were being forced into introducing LTN schemes rapidly, while being threatened with losing funding for schemes deemed unsatisfactory by Government. The Government’s response was to issue Network Management Duty Guidance which emphasised the importance of consultation on controversial schemes. Local authorities would now be required to publish detailed consultation plans and to show “reasonable evidence” of consultation before schemes could be introduced. In its role as an Executive Agency, these new requirements would be overseen by ATE, with the threat that funding could be reduced if conditions were not met.

Top-down or bottom-up governance?

The top-down character of the Government’s vision for ATE has continued with the demands for consultation, but there was little guidance on how actually to bring about successful implementation. Meanwhile, many LTN schemes continued to cause high degrees of controversy. The majority of schemes have been in London, but in 2021 schemes in Redbridge, Harrow, Wandsworth, Sutton and Ealing were removed. LTN schemes outside London could also cause severe governance problems. In Oxford, the six LTNs introduced in 2021-22 were accompanied by drivers taking vehicles onto pavements to avoid the bollards and planters at the entrances to the LTNs, and a substantial share of barriers were vandalised. In these circumstances, local authorities were largely left to their own devices, with the Government’s top-down strategy providing little assistance.

The vagaries of the political climate make it even more imperative that bodies such as ATE are allowed to make an independent judgement.

Ironically, the Government itself has performed a U-turn on its support for LTNs, with Transport Secretary Mark Harper refusing to support any LTN schemes in the latest tranche of the Active Travel Fund, followed by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak ordering the DfT to conduct a review of LTN schemes. The latter decision came in the wake of the unexpected success of the Conservative Party at the Uxbridge and South Ruislip byelection, where their victory was attributed to local opposition to the extension to outer London of the Ultra Low Emission Zone by Labour Mayor of London Sadiq Khan. However, the vagaries of the political climate make it even more imperative that bodies such as ATE are allowed to make an independent judgement.

To achieve its maximum impact, the emphasis on ATE as a top-down inspectorate needs to be softened, so that the CF can work in a more collaborative way with the local authorities. This is particularly important with controversial LTN schemes. Local circumstances and conditions can play a crucial role in finding a successful way forward, and a high degree of discretion can be required in such processes as consultation and detailed planning.

Persistence and resilience are two requirements for the successful implementation of LTNs, and in these circumstances pressure from a top-down inspectorate can be counter-productive. Valuable lessons can undoubtedly be drawn from implementation so far which can feed into the work of the CF, but the best results are likely to spring from the varied experiences of local authorities. There is no magic formula that can be applied universally to solve the complex governance problems inherent in active travel schemes such as LTNs.

This article forms part of the project The Governance of Controversies in the Allocation of Road Space: The Case of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, funded by the Rees Jeffreys Road Fund.

All articles posted on this blog give the views of the author(s), and not the position of LSE British Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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