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16 May 2025

ACT parent company Bira has said that members are hopeful the warm weather, Easter weekend and upcoming bank holidays will provide a much-needed boost to high street sales.

15 May 2025

UK economy delivers strongest quarterly performance in a year despite forecasts of business downturn.

15 May 2025

A new e-bike hire scheme is set to launch in Edinburgh on a two-year trial basis, with the aim of having bikes on the streets ahead of this summer’s Fringe Festival.

14 May 2025

The City of London’s ‘Square Mile’ has seen the biggest increase in cycling since records began, with daily numbers rising past all previous counts.

13 May 2025

Local Bike Shop Day 2025 brought a wave of...

12 May 2025

A doctor left with life-changing spinal injuries after the front forks of his gravel bike snapped during a ride has secured a £4.5 million settlement following a prolonged legal battle.

8 May 2025

ACT parent company Bira has welcomed the Bank of England's decision to reduce interest rates from 4.5% to 4.25%, calling it a "much-needed boost" for the retail sector, including for cycling...

8 May 2025

ACT parent company Bira has responded to the news that the 144-year-old Beales department store is staging a "Rachel Reeves Closing Down Sale" in its final weeks of trading, with giant yellow...

2 May 2025

Could the UK cycling industry be showing signs of renewed momentum? Following a challenging period marked by falling sales and overstocked inventories, overall trends and sales figures from...

2 May 2025

The Netherlands is set to legalise electric scooters and other light electric vehicles on public roads from July 2025, provided they are registered and display a license plate.

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Ministers prioritised driving over active travel in England, The Guardian reports

Posted on in Business News , Cycles News

The Guardian has reported that ministers decided to prioritise driving over active travel because of worries about “15-minute cities”.

Cycling in the park

The report says that ministers began considering curbs on cycling and walking schemes in March last year, with one document saying, “in response to concerns about 15-minute cities”, an urban planning concept that Rishi Sunak’s government has repeatedly mischaracterised.

Other policy papers, uncovered as part of a legal challenge by the Transport Action Network (TAN), show officials warned ministers that a parallel crackdown on low traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) was likely to be legally “challenging”.

Another document advised ministers they should drop plans to improve active travel “quietly”, adding: “We would not propose to make any public announcement to this effect.”

In his speech to the Conservative conference in October, Mark Harper, the transport secretary, described 15-minutes cities as schemes in which “local councils can decide how often you go to the shops”.

While many critics assumed at the time this was just rhetoric, the documents indicate Harper and the Department for Transport (DfT) used this definition as the basis for one of the biggest shifts in transport policy for decades.

The document from March proposes removing pro-active travel measures introduced during Covid because of worries about 15-minute cities.

It is understood that officials were referring to plans to extend LTN-type schemes to wider areas, such as one due to begin in Oxford next year. This has been widely confused with separate 15-minute city ideas.

You can read the full Guardian article here.

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