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31
Oct
Mayor and council leader clash over new £4 million active travel fund
North Yorkshire Council’s Conservative leader Carl Les has said he can’t support Labour mayor David Skaith’s new £4 million active travel fund.
Mr Skaith, the Mayor of York and North Yorkshire, gave details of the fund, which is expected to open for applications in January, last week.
Of the £4 million available over two years, £500,000 — 12.5% of the entire sum — will go towards external partners to manage the fund and a new active travel commissioner's role, plus 'internal costs'.
A further £2.4 million is ringfenced for large projects of between £100,000 and £500,000 run by public bodies.
Another £1 million will go to small projects of between £10,000 and £100,000. The remaining £100,000 will pay for “additional highway officer resource”.
At a meeting last week of York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority, which you can watch here, Cllr Les said:
I feel very sorry that I can’t actually support this. I would like to – I certainly agree with the concept of active travel, and I certainly support the idea of you setting up an active fund to develop active travel initiatives.
But I do have some concerns about the process, and I have expressed them before. I do worry that having the two funds is going to promote some unhelpful competition between the funds.
I wonder whether the managing agent could actually be the local authority — ourselves — and whether we need to create something else.
'Ability to deliver'
North Yorkshire Council receives annual funding from government body Active Travel England to deliver schemes that encourage cycling, walking and wheeling.
The creation of the mayor's fund means two public bodies will provide this function in North Yorkshire.
North Yorkshire Council has faced criticism over its ability to deliver cycling schemes in recent years, particularly in Harrogate.
Active Travel England rated the council level one in its latest capability ratings, which assess councils’ ability to plan, design and deliver active travel schemes. The lowest rating is zero and the highest is four.
Mr Skaith, who oversees the combined authority, referred to this in his response to Cllr Les. He said:
One of the major challenges that Active Travel England have identified with local authorities is that ability to deliver on projects, that’s why having this external fund, having a team, having a commissioner, is a major part of how we are going to improve that rating with Active Travel England and show leadership in this area to therefore get us up that ranking.
The mayor announced plans to appoint an active travel commissioner in November last year. An appointment has yet to be made but a combined authority spokesperson today (October 31) told the Stray Ferret: “The recruitment has concluded, and an announcement will follow shortly.”
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