This is a trade facing website. Visit the ACT's consumer site thecyclingexperts.co.uk for information and advice on cycling and find your local independent cycle retailer.

Search News

Results: 131-140 of 884


29 Feb 2024

Retailers looking for a payment solution that facilitates in-person, remote and online payments should look at what’s on offer from ACT partner Global Payments.
 

29 Feb 2024

The ACT is happy to confirm the date for Local Bike Shop Day 2024 as Saturday 4 May, the weekend of the early May Bank Holiday.

27 Feb 2024

The inaugural Cycling Electric magazine Demo Day will take place on Sunday, April 28th, at the Lee Valley VeloPark in London.

27 Feb 2024

New research from the European Cyclists' Federation (ECF), a Brussels-based advocacy group, has confirmed that if a city has more bike lanes, more people will cycle. The results will give...

13 Feb 2024

2024 is well underway and we’re just around the corner from the Spring Statement and for the retail sector it’s pretty much business as usual…or is it?

13 Feb 2024

Fabian Hamilton MP, co-chair of the Walking and Cycling All-Party Parliamentary Group, has said that the Cycle to Work scheme "must be reformed".

13 Feb 2024

The British Independent Retailers Association (Bira) has called for a series of cost-saving measures in the next Budget to help boost business.

12 Feb 2024

People across England are missing out on a slew of health, wellbeing and environmental benefits due to half a century of “chronic underfunding” of its streets, according to Cycling...

12 Feb 2024

ACT member and Cytech-accredited Pauls Cycles in Dereham, Norfolk has said its electric bike sales have increased by a quarter since October, despite predictions they would drop off over...

9 Feb 2024

Guy Opperman, the Minister for Roads and Local Transport at the Department for Transport, whose focuses among other things on cycling and active travel, has attended a meeting of...

Back to news menu

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.

Back to news menu

Useful links

If you have any other queries please contact us.