Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment she has made of the potential implications for local pedestrian safety of encouraging local authorities to prioritise the creation and connectivity of active travel routes in ways that could affect their eligibility for Active Travel funding.

Active Travel England (ATE) undertakes assurance of new or upgraded schemes in close collaboration with local authorities. Submitted scheme designs are put through a series of checks using the ATE scheme review tools, last published in February 2024.

These tools include an assessment of the critical safety issues for walking, wheeling and cycling to support local authorities over scheme quality. Additional guidance on how to work with the safety issues was published in November 2025.

Eleven of the sixteen critical safety issues relate to walking and cover examples such as conflict at junctions, trip hazards, the standard and positioning of crossings and the condition of the footway. Tool outputs for completed schemes are considered as part of authority active travel capability ratings, which in turn help to determine future funding impacts.