In a historic judgment, the Court of Appeal has ruled in Transport Action Network’s (TAN) favour, finding that the March 2023 cuts to cycling and walking funding imposed by the Treasury were unlawful.
According to TAN, the case sets a new precedent that ministers cannot disregard duties set by Parliament even if they might find them “inconvenient”.
For many years, cycling and walking received ad hoc and piecemeal funding, making them Cinderella forms of mobility. In response, Parliament passed a popular provision in the Infrastructure Act 2015, giving them the same status as railways and roads, by requiring regularly updated strategies and stable funding. Public Health England welcomed this key shift, saying it “should have large implications for enabling people to travel in more physically active ways for short journeys”.
The last plan was published in 2022, promising record funding on the basis that investing in better conditions for walking and cycling was “one of the best return on investment decisions governments can make” that would be “saving our NHS billions of pounds each year”. Yet hours before confirming the spring statement in March 2023, the Treasury forced the Department for Transport to cut £200m of dedicated funding for active travel. Though this decision was criticised by both the National Audit Office and Public Accounts Committee of MPs, the cuts were never reversed. TAN filed a legal challenge that June but the High Court in May 2024 accepted the Department for Transport’s (DfT) defence that the funding it had promised was just a guestimate.
In a unanimous decision, the Court of Appeal ruled in TAN’s favour. Giving judgment, Lady Justice Elisabeth Laing said: “There is nothing vague about a requirement to ‘specify the resources to be made available by the Secretary of State’. The word is ‘specify’ not ‘project’, ‘estimate’ or ‘guess’… that is what Parliament has required, and if the Secretary of State finds it inconvenient, or ‘impractical’ to comply with the procedure for variation, then the Secretary of State can persuade Parliament to amend the legislation. The remedy is not to read in words which are not in section 21, or to ignore the words which are in section 21.”
Chris Todd, director of Transport Action Network, which brought the case, said: “Given how good walking and cycling is for the economy, for improving access to jobs, for the NHS and people’s health, in fact all of Labour’s missions, it has been a mystery why Labour continued defending a Conservative cut. It doesn’t make sense unless Rachel Reeves has been captured by the Treasury groupthink. Investing in small scale schemes, rather than glossy mega-projects like roads, means higher returns for the country and real benefits for communities. We are hugely grateful for all the individuals and community groups who responded so generously, without their support this victory would not have happened.”
Because the funding cut was for the period up to March 2025 and the appeal heard after that date, for procedural reasons the court could not order the return of the funding. TAN is now seeking an immediate £250m boost, consisting of the cut funding plus interest and adjusted for inflation. This argument is boosted by a ministerial briefing revealed in the proceedings, which accepted any cuts would “necessitat[e] higher levels of funding in 2025 onwards to make up shortfalls”. In any event the decision sets a powerful precedent that should banish the chop and change funding for good.
The case comes at a critical time for cycling and walking, with the previous strategy expiring in March 2025, and 2025 targets set to be missed. TAN is calling for the DfT to comply with its legal obligation of providing a progress report to Parliament, as the last report was in July 2022. It is also calling for a public consultation, the last having been in 2016, to inform the level of ambition in the third Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy (CWIS3), which is now long overdue.
Ralph Smyth, TAN’s consultant, who proposed the law in 2015, said: “Official advice revealed in the case said that cycling and walking funding could be cut more easily than large projects locked into long contracts. That was exactly why Parliament voted to give this extra protection to healthy travel schemes. It’s brilliant to see this law finally working as it was intended. We are now calling on the Department for Transport and Treasury to work with us to Get Britain Building a world leading future for walking and cycling.”
The Government is understood to be seeking permission to appeal to the Supreme Court.
