Welsh Government active travel ambitions are ‘a long way from being achieved’, says Audit Wales.
In a new report, it said there had been increased spending through the Active Travel Fund but warned that headline active travel rates have not improved in recent years.
It said that better evidence was needed 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 is differentiated from 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 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 £20 million to £46 million. Total expenditure in the period was £218 million.
Audit Wales said the Welsh Government had allocated £65 million 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, it said.
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’, said Audit Wales.
It said: “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.”
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.”
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, says the report.
The Act’s reporting requirements are not being met consistently, it says, 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, including work on a new monitoring and evaluation framework and a new assessment and funding framework to support delivery.
Dr Dafydd Trystan, Chair of the Active Travel Board, 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.”
