WARRINGTON is one of 18 local authorities across the UK who will share £2.5 million Government funding to encourage active travel.
The Walk to School Outreach funding for Living Streets will benefit more than 1,000 schools.
Trudy Harrison, Parliamentary Under Secretary for Transport announced the additional funding at Living Streets’ National Walking Summit today.
She said the money would allow for the continuation of active travel behaviour change outreach programmes.
Warrington is one of the smaller authorities to benefit from the handout. Others include cities and combined authorities such as Birmingham, Newcastle, Nottingham, West Yorkshire and West Midlands.
A number of schools in the borough have already launched “walking buses” to enable children to walk to school safely.
The Walk to School Outreach programme has already led to 17 million new walking journeys and 1.8 million fewer car miles nationally since it was launched, supporting the government’s objective that 55 per cent of primary school children walk to school by 2025.
The funding will also support the expansion of the successful Modeshift STARS programme next year, allowing more schools and businesses to promote more sustainable and active modes of travel. And a new Active Travel Academies pilot, in partnerships with Modeshift and the Bikeability Trust, will support young people to become Active Travel Ambassadors as well as providing the skills and infrastructure to walk and cycle to school.
Trudy Harrison said: “Behaviour change outreach programmes are key to giving people the inspiration, information, skills and confidence to enable them to choose to walk, wheel or cycle more of their everyday journeys.
“The funding I was pleased to confirm today will allow Living Streets, Modeshift and Bikeability Trust to ramp up activity and work with partners to remove even more barriers to walking and cycling. I’m particularly keen to see progress in including those from more deprived communities in these programmes.”
Picture: A “walking bus” at Lymm some years ago
