Active Travel England

Active Travel England champions walking, wheeling, and cycling as the preferred everyday travel modes in England, rooted in values of inclusivity, innovation, safety, community co-design, and evidence-based impact for public health, net zero emissions, and reduced congestion. Their philosophy emphasizes collaboration with local authorities, charities, social enterprises, and community organizations to build capacity, incubate bold ideas, and drive population-level modal shift from private cars through partnership, technical guidance, and rigorous evaluation, believing sustained change arises from accessible infrastructure, behaviour change, and empowering underrepresented groups to overcome activity barriers.

They prioritize revenue-funded interventions expanding everyday walking, wheeling, and cycling among inactive and underrepresented beneficiaries including women and girls facing gender-specific barriers, ethnic minority communities experiencing cultural or access hurdles, disabled people with physical disabilities requiring inclusive wheeling routes and adaptive cycling schemes, and children through school-based walking and cycling initiatives promoting active travel to school. Supported activities encompass behaviour change programmes fostering habit formation, community engagement campaigns shifting attitudes towards active modes, digital innovations for route planning and motivation, peer-led cycling groups for disabled adults and youth, promotional outreach addressing isolation and inactivity, staff training for delivery, and monitoring for modal shift outcomes. They target solutions to physical inactivity, air quality degradation, traffic-related stress, and climate emissions via community-led, inclusive, preventative approaches that enhance economic vitality, mental wellbeing through outdoor activities, and social cohesion.

Exclusions include capital infrastructure projects, core funding, and non-England interventions; they avoid pilots without scalability or lacking robust evaluation. Distinctive for sole active travel focus, statutory planning influence, and Innovation Fund backing bold scaling of proven ideas, they prioritize charities and social enterprises delivering for inactive groups like disabled people, ethnic minorities, women/girls, and children in underserved communities, demanding community involvement, inclusivity, and measurable health-environmental gains through evidence-based, partnership-driven practice.