Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what discussions her Department has had with the Department for Transport on steps to meet the Government's objective to increase the proportion of children walking to school from 46 per cent to 55 per cent.

The Department supports the Department for Transport’s target to increase the numbers of pupils walking to school. Local authorities have a duty to promote sustainable school travel and transport, and our statutory guidance on home to school transport states that strategies for encouraging walking should form part of that duty. Departmental officials have recently met the Living Streets Charity to discuss how we can further help local authorities in promoting walking to school and we continue to support and promote initiatives such as Living Streets, Modeshift and Sustrans both by engaging with consultations and through our guidance.

The guidance can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/445407/Home_to_School_Travel_and_Transport_Guidance.pdf