Cynulliad Cenedlaethol Cymru

Bore da a chroeso. Good morning and welcome to this morning's meeting of the Public Accounts and Public Administration Committee in the Senedd, the Welsh Parliament. The meeting will be held bilingually. Headsets provide simultaneous translation on channel 1 and sound amplification on channel 2 and those participants joining online, including my fellow Members, can access translation by clicking on the globe icon on Zoom.

Welcome, Tom Giffard and Mike Hedges. I understand that neither Adam Price nor Rhianon Passmore are able to join us this morning. Do those Members attending have any declarations of registrable interest that they wish to declare that are not otherwise recorded on the public record? No indications. That's fine, thank you.

We have a few papers to note, the first being a letter from the Minister for Culture, Skills and Social Partnership to the Chair of the Culture, Communications, Welsh Language, Sport and International Relations Committee regarding the review of the Welsh Government's culture division. The letter notes that the Welsh Government will not publish any confidential information on staffing matters and will not comment on any leaks. It explains that feedback from staff is taken seriously and that feedback is encouraged. It notes that the 2024 people survey results for the organisation show an improvement for the culture division, including in learning and development, which they prioritised. Our report on the Welsh Government's accounts for 2023-24 refers to this matter. This draft report will be considered in private later in today's meeting and there will be an opportunity to discuss this matter further then if Members wish to do so. But, at this point, do Members wish to comment further on this correspondence, or are you content to note it? Mike's content, Tom is content; they're not indicating otherwise, so we will note the letter. Thank you.

Our second item to note is a letter from Dave Lees, the chief executive officer of Bristol Airport Ltd, which was sent to Rebecca Evans MS in her capacity as Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Energy and Planning, regarding Cardiff Airport. We were copied into this open letter, which raised concerns about the proposed investment into Cardiff Airport by the Welsh Government. The letter raises concerns about the levels of investment being directed to Cardiff Airport, referring to the Competition and Markets Authority report into the proposed subsidy. This committee will hear from the Welsh Government on Cardiff Airport at our next meeting on 14 June, when, no doubt, this will be a matter of focus. But in the meantime, Members, would you like to comment on this correspondence, or are you content to note it? I think I see both Members seeming to indicate that they're content to note, in which case, I'd be grateful if you could do so.

Our third item to note is a letter from Andrew Slade, director general for economy, energy and transport in the Welsh Government to myself, as Chair, regarding our active travel in Wales inquiry. The director general has written to us in advance of their session with us today, to provide some further context about their implementation of the auditor general's recommendations. The letter notes that action has been undertaken in response to all recommendations, with apparently significant progress made in relation to data collection and monitoring. The briefing materials that we have for today's session reflect this response, and there will therefore be an opportunity for Members to scrutinise these issues during today's session. But at this point, Members, would you like to comment on the letter, or are you otherwise content to note it and pick it up later? Content to note. Thank you very much indeed.

Our fourth item, or paper to note, doesn't exist, which is good news. I was just turning the page, and there it wasn't. Thank you. So, if we could go into a temporary break and reconvene at 9.35 a.m.

Bore da. Good morning. Croeso. Welcome to the witnesses who have now joined us for our evidence session on active travel in Wales with the Welsh Government. I'd be grateful if the witnesses could begin, please, by stating their names and roles for the record.

Bore da, Chair, committee and other colleagues. I'll kick off, and then go to Peter and to Natalie. I'm Andrew Slade, director general, economy, energy and transport with the Welsh Government.

Bore da, bawb. My name is Peter McDonald and I am director for transport and digital connectivity in Welsh Government.

Bore da. I'm Natalie Grohmann. I'm the active travel policy lead in Welsh Government

Thank you, and thanks for attending this committee this morning. As you would expect, we have many questions. I'd therefore be grateful if both Members and yourselves as witnesses could be as succinct and focused as possible to enable us to cover as many of these issues as possible. We will be taking an informal break at about 10.35 a.m. for five minutes. As convention has it, I will start the questions as Chair, before inviting colleagues to take up further questions.

So, if I may begin with quite a general question. How does the Welsh Government assess the overall progress it has made against its active travel delivery plan over the last year, both in terms of what's worked well, where progress has been achieved, but also where things have not progressed as quickly as desired, and why, and potentially what you believe you need to do differently?

Thank you Chair. I'll kick off, and then colleagues can come in on some of the detail or, indeed, offer their own perspectives on this because, as you say, that's a useful broad-ranging question for us to get going with. Overall, I feel we're making useful progress. The origins of all of this work, as you know, stem back to everything that led up to the Active Travel (Wales) Act in 2013. Walking, wheeling and cycling are now very significant parts of our transport strategy, 'Llwybr Newydd', and inclusive travel in all its forms is hugely important to our Cabinet Secretary.

The first five years, I think, after the Act were about establishing our understanding of the networks that operate. I think, up to that point, it's fair to say that quite a lot of what was going on in respect of what we now think of as active travelling was single chunks of either road or path, but cycling or walking predominantly, but not so much about networks that connected people with work, with town centres, with schools or other significant places in how people live their lives. The first four or five years after the Act were about establishing our understanding of those networks, getting to a place where we knew what we wanted to invest in, and that then led to the active travel fund from 2018 onwards.

Lots of work has gone on since then alongside the funding, which now I think totals the best part of £220 million that has gone into this area. But I think it is fair to say that, in respect of the active travel delivery plan, we recognise, not least because of the number of reviews and studies done by Senedd committees and colleagues, there was more to be done about how we strengthen delivery, and that then led to the creation of the active travel delivery plan. It's not a plan for the delivery of everything associated with active travel, but more about how we strengthen the delivery.

We've certainly made progress on building our understanding and our data pool. We've certainly made progress in relation to what we do on prioritisation and on what we do around the promotion of active travel. We've done a lot of work with colleagues in Transport for Wales, building and helping them build their capacity. They in turn are now taking a leading role in holding the ring nationally in support of local authorities. So, lots of significant progress has been made, but, as you hint in your question, there's still work for us to do. Some of the work is still relatively in its infancy, and we are also in the process of moving towards a new set of arrangements around the regional delivery of transport, and our work on active travel needs to be rolled into those wider developments in respect of our integrated transport system. So, those are my initial thoughts. I might, if you're willing, ask Peter and Natalie to offer their own reflections.

Yes, please.

Thank you, Andrew. And just to continue that, Chair, you asked specifically about the active travel delivery plan over the most recent year, and I would say that, in summary, the things that are being progressed best probably relate to the capability within Transport for Wales, the support we can provide local authorities through that capability, and a number of the important documents referenced in the Audit Wales report that are being delivered through that capability, for example a prioritisation tool and a monitoring and evaluation framework. So, I think those underpinning foundations have been strengthened over the past year.

Where we have struggled more is those areas that are directly related to the amount of funding that can be put in, and I would highlight revenue funding as a particular constraint at the moment in this budgetary situation, which is obviously very tight. We've had to make some hard choices in that regard, so that is something we will need to keep under careful review.

And just in addition, it's worth reflecting on how the overall policy context has changed over the past year. Andrew referenced the move towards a more regional approach for transport grant allocation, and that is a point worthy of note, a changing piece of context. And the second is the set of priorities that this Cabinet Secretary has put in place around active travel, in particular around a greater emphasis on walking, safe travel to school, and also greater care and attention to equalities issues and inclusion.

So, that would be my summary of where we've managed, more or less, under the plan over the past year, and those areas of changing policy context that play into the story of the year as well.

Okay, thank you. Does Natalie wish to add anything to that? No. Okay, thank you.

Well, you mentioned Transport for Wales in practice, on a day-to-day basis or otherwise. How have you been working with Transport for Wales to support the delivery of the plan and track progress? And what role has the active travel board been playing in holding yourselves and other bodies to account?

Just on that last point first, again I'll kick off, but then colleagues can come in. I think we would propose that we have taken the advice of the all-party group in relation to the active travel board and come up with a practice over the last few years, a different set of arrangements from those obtained in the initial period after the Act, so independent sharing, strengthened arrangements in relation to non-executives, bringing in expertise and so on. But I'll invite colleagues in a moment to say a little bit more about the board's composition and its role in terms of overseeing this aspect of our delivery work.

And in relation to TfW, TfW has been on an incredible journey over the last few years, starting from a point where they were really set up to do work on a very specific component to do with rail. And I might, if Peter's willing, ask him to talk a little bit more about the TfW journey, because I do think it is a very significant one and a significant point for us in Wales. I regularly talk to colleagues in Whitehall and indeed to people internationally about what we're doing on this front, and active travel is a very significant component now of what Transport for Wales are trying to do as part of their move towards a seamless and integrated approach to transport across Wales. And we have been working with them—indeed, I was talking to the chief executive only yesterday—on a range of fronts to develop that seamlessness of approach to our transport. And when we think about public transport, pretty well every public transport journey will either begin or end, and possibly both, with some components of active travel, so this is hugely important.

They've increased their capacity as an organisation now to around about 20 people within the organisation working directly on active travel, but then others come and go into the mix as required in respect of providing particular bits of advice. And we feel that that relationship with TfW is working extremely well, and we're very grateful to the TfW board and executive for everything they've done in this area, and we feel that that is making a very significant contribution in their work, in turn, with local authorities. So, that would be, again, my headline position, but I might see if Peter wants to talk a little bit more about that.

Just starting with Transport for Wales, if that would be appropriate, Chair, as Andrew said, Transport for Wales is on a journey to go from a rail franchise overseer—and they've gone a long way from that—to, in effect, a multimodal transport authority. And actually, there are not many of those that exist on a national scale in the UK. In fact, Transport for Wales would be the only one on a national scale. A good analogy is Transport for London, albeit the metropolis of London is very different from the variety of regions, people and geographies that we have in Wales. But in terms of how that authority integrates over modes, it's a good analogy to have in our head.

If you were to look at the job descriptions of the Transport for Wales executive leadership team, you would not see the words 'rail', 'bus' or 'active travel' in their headline titles. And that's very deliberate, because we want each of them to be looking from a multimodal perspective, and at initial stages of transport planning, indeed, to be mode agnostic, to take transport problems and then reflect on the best transport mode to go about solving them.

In parallel to that, we are also strengthening Transport for Wales such that it provides support to both central Government, Welsh Government, and local government. So, that's both individual local authorities and the corporate joint committees. And that's why a couple of years ago, I joined the Transport for Wales board as an observer. Also, Andrew Morgan, as chair of the Welsh Local Government Association, joined the Transport for Wales board as an observer, because we want Transport for Wales to be a set of expertise and capability that is available to all parts of the Welsh public sector that have duties in relation to transport, whether or not they happen to fall in central Government or local government.

With respect to how we work with Transport for Wales and scrutinise them, I generally say that we adopt a partnership and scrutiny approach in parallel. We don't see those as mutually exclusive terms. We think that the relationship works best when we do both of those in tandem. As Andrew was highlighting, there's a series of general scrutiny and partnership mechanisms we have with Transport for Wales. So, as Andrew said, for example, yesterday we spent two hours with the chief executive officer and chair doing our regular scrutiny review, and that's across all TfW functions. There are, of course, some specific ones relating to active travel, which Natalie may be able to describe; they happen more at a working level.

We also do a lot of scrutiny of the Transport for Wales business plan. So, for example, in addition, yesterday, as it happens, I spent another two hours with the chief executive going through what Transport for Wales had and hadn't delivered against the 2024-25 business plan across all transport modes, and thinking about how we will be monitoring the business plan in this coming financial year. And all of this underlying 'plumbing', as we sometimes call it, has become a lot stronger over the past few years, and that reflects that Transport for Wales does more for Wales than it has done in the past. That, as Andrew said at the beginning, is quite a growth curve. But I'll pause there on the general reflections, because I'm conscious of your steer, Chair, to be succinct. So, I'll just allow Natalie a moment to talk about the areas specifically in relation to active travel.

I think it's very clear from the active travel delivery plan how critical TfW, and the capacity that we have built in TfW, is to achieving what we're trying to achieve here. So, you can see that a great number of the actions in the active travel delivery plan are for TfW to lead on. We regularly, monthly, have meetings on the programme with the wider actions. We have separate meetings around the management of the funding that they are administering for us. And we also have dedicated meetings monthly on a whole range of the sub-actions in the action plan, because it is quite an ambitious programme that they're taking forward for us. So, yes, it's a very close working relationship, and we are incredibly dependent on the capacity that we have built there in terms of moving this forward, given the rather constrained team in Welsh Government.

Okay. Well, I'll jump on. How confident are you that the delivery plan reflects what realistically is affordable and achievable within current capacity and budget expectations? What would your priorities be? How would they differ if you had greater capacity and budget in this area?

Well, that's a great question. I'll attempt an answer, and then, as I say, colleagues can add to that. So, if we had more money, we could do more on the capital front. I think it's pretty well established, and the auditor general sets out very clearly in his report, that you make the most headway when you combine infrastructure development with work on behaviour change and you also do a lot of facilitative work as well. So, you're combining pots of money and you're combining investments both for the capital and revenue context into achieving those ends. So, there's definitely more that we could do. We could do more in terms of infrastructure. We could do more in terms of promoting and training. We are doing what we can with the resources available to us in all of these areas, and using resources as wisely as we can. And that partly goes to the point that both Peter and Natalie were making around use of TfW. TfW have that overview. They are working with all of the relevant partners, working closely with the developing regional structures, but also directly with local government. So, that is an efficient and effective way for us to be offering support at the national level out to the regional and the local teams that are driving this work forward.

In terms of the resourcing of the plan itself, as I said, the focus of the plan was about how we strengthen delivery. Obviously, money is part of that, but a lot of that, as Peter touched on, was around capacity and capability development, and the increasingly important role being played by TfW. But, as your question very fairly hints, Chair, we are operating in resource-constrained times. All public services are under pressure. So, it's the art of the possible with the money that is available to us, I think, is probably where I would fetch up in terms of the succinct response to that question. But let me see if colleagues want to add anything.

Just to add to that, obviously, in transport, the traditional response, when additional funding is available, is to look towards capital schemes, and that obviously has a time and a place, especially given that we have a long way left to go in terms of delivering the network that is set out in the various active travel network plans that each local authority has. However, probably at this stage—and I think this is reflected in what we've learned from the Audit Wales report and recent reviews—I think there's a reasonable case for the marginal pound, if there were to be one, to go on expertise, capability, capacity, and perhaps some behaviour change interventions as well. Now, our challenge there is that those types of expenditure tend to be more on the revenue expenditure, rather than on the capital expenditure point. But I think, certainly, as we look in future budgets, in future financial years, we need to look very carefully at the balance between our revenue funding and our capital funding, such that we can assure ourselves that we are getting as much value as we can from that capital funding. And that's certainly one of the lessons learned we've picked up in our discussions with other authorities as well, such as Active Travel England.

Thank you. Natalie, do you wish to add anything?

I think I would mainly iterate the same point. So, in terms of the revenue funding, I think we are all very cognisant that, ideally, we would be doing more, but it is very constrained. It is also the revenue funding for local authorities—the ability to maintain and do the upkeep of the investment that they've already had. So, it is, yes, a thorny issue, I suppose.

Okay. Before I move on, some of the evidence internationally we've received in terms of—. We'll have a section later on behaviour change, so I don't want to focus too much on that, but it identified that this isn't as much chicken and egg, it's a two-way process, and that, rather than investing in major capital projects, there's a gain to be had by initially testing things with people and communities, perhaps just with bollards and relaying a layout temporarily and seeing how it works, and seeing how behaviour changes, what the barriers are, or whether the public think it's a good idea, which then can lead it to being prioritised when capital funding is available. How do you respond to that international perspective?

Well, I think we would recognise that in terms of learning. The team have done a lot of learning from other parts of the UK but also picking up on studies and work that has been done in other countries. And that, at least in part, has informed where we're trying to go with pilot towns for centres for some of these types of initiatives. It's the same sort of set of principles, I think, Chair, in terms of testing the water with communities, finding out what works with communities.

But, as you say, I think the chicken-and-egg thing is tricky. If you haven't got the infrastructure, it's quite hard to persuade people to get out of cars or come off other forms of transport, because either they don't feel safe or they don't feel that the arrangements are going to help them. On the other hand, you've got to have people willing to make use of the investment in the infrastructure as well. So, there is an element of push and pull in this in the way that you describe.

On other international comparisons, I don't know whether Natalie wanted to add anything particularly there, or indeed Peter to come in more generally on the point about how we make shifts in behaviour linked to piloting of arrangements. 

I think your summary, Chair, was a very fair one in terms of where the international evidence lies. Often, those countries have been on a longer active travel journey, culturally and socially, than parts of the United Kingdom have. And certainly, what we have found is that we are—. It feels like we've been working on this for a long time, and, in terms of financial years, we have, but, in the context of the behaviours we are seeking to adjust, those have been ingrained in the United Kingdom and Welsh psyche for some time, given the underlying prioritisation of motor vehicles for very understandable reasons.

I think you also make a good point on the flexibility of active travel schemes. If I think about how long it takes to deliver an active travel scheme, it is an awful lot quicker sometimes than, certainly, a rail scheme, and certainly some big road schemes. As we saw during COVID, for example in Cardiff city centre, you can do things quite quickly if you are doing them on a temporary, pilot basis and you have an enthused local authority that is closely connected to the local community and knows the things that it wants to trial. On the other hand, we need to balance that against some of what we've learnt about the importance of greater consultation and engagement with a greater number of people, including more under-represented groups, when we design these schemes. So, we need to balance out flexibility and nimbleness with taking people with us, because, certainly, one of the things that we have learnt over the last few years is that we need to do more around the inclusive active travel agenda.

Yes. And in terms of taking people with you, ensuring you're not creating barriers that exclude them even if they would like to be incorporated. However, we'll have to move on. Mike Hedges, you have some questions.

I do indeed. Sorry, I was waiting for me to be unmuted then. I'll start with the first one. The problem with some of these transport schemes is we want to take people from where they are not to where they do not want to go. That's something that really has to be got over. But you can't deal with transport in isolation; it's transport to somewhere, isn't it? So, what I'm really asking is: how do you work with other departments, economic development and education, to ensure that economic development is developing on sites where it's easy to get to, or that you've got housing that is being developed on sites that are easy to get to or can be easily added, or that schools are put in the right place, so it's easy to get to them? Sometimes, moving a school a quarter of a mile, you've almost got an active travel route there. If you don't, then you've got a big gap in the middle and the only way of getting there is by car.

Well, I think that's very fair and goes back to the point I was making around where we were, I think, back in 2013, around the nature of active travel and your point about building—I don’t want to overtypify this, but—stretches of cycle routes, or walking and wheeling paths, which, while important in themselves, didn’t necessarily do the thing that you’ve just described, which is how you connect things. So, I think there is—. As Peter has alluded to, we’ve been on a journey on this.

I’ll bring Natalie in in a moment, because she’s done a lot of work with colleagues across Government, and indeed other public parts of the public sector, to work on the integration of our approach. But I think the first thing I’d want to say, to reassure you, is that active travel, and everything we’re trying to do, both in relation to public health and net zero, among other policy objectives, is sown throughout all of our major strategic planks of activity across Welsh Government, and indeed all of the major strategies. So, I’m thinking about the work we’re doing on the economy, your point about housing, what we’re trying to do in respect of education and health.

And just to give one example from my own perspective, and, then, if you’re willing, I'll go to Natalie for some detail, I chair Welsh Government’s infrastructure strategy group, and indeed, the auditor general is doing some work with us on where we are with our investment strategy. One of the things that we regularly talk about there is prioritisation of investments across the slew of Welsh Government capital work, or capital-funded work, which includes what we’re doing on, for example, schools. And we have built in to the arrangements for investment appraisal in respect of new schools, or changes to school buildings and footprints, the need to incorporate active travel and travel to school by means other than the private car. So, for me, that’s just one example of where we are trying to drive this agenda more widely through the work of Welsh Government and out into the wider public sector.

But, if Natalie’s willing, and you’re content with this, I might go to her for a little bit more context.

I would say that, at the national level, over the last five to 10 years, we’ve actually made real strides in terms of aligning our policies. So, 'Planning Policy Wales' is incredibly aligned with the Wales transport strategy, and, similarity, our regeneration strategies, ‘Healthy Weight: Healthy Wales’, they’re all kind of talking the right language and trying to achieve the same things. I think we do see that there is still an implementation gap, at the local level often. I think that is partially due to capacity, maybe timing misalignment, sometimes, with local development plans already being quite old.

But there’s definitely an appetite to try and tackle that. Andrew brought the example of the school estate in. So, my team works incredibly closely with the capital team that looks at all the business cases for new school and education facilities in Wales, and tries to ask, at the right time, the question of how people will actually get there, and whether it’s possible to walk and cycle. Ultimately, this will save local authorities money, if they don’t have to bus the children in. So, it’s something that’s recognised, but it’s by no means perfect yet, and we know there are still schemes coming forward where it’s less than ideal. But there’s a lot of effort and interest in improving these links and making sure that we have far fewer of these incidents where you build a school at the edge of, I don’t know, a dual carriageway and so on, and nobody can get there. We also have, for example, improved things like the Welsh housing quality standard, which now considers active travel access, which is something that’s quite new and interesting.

So, I think it’s recognised. It’s not perfect, but we are definitely making progress.

Thank you for that. I’m very keen on integrated public transport, and I’m well aware that there are places in Swansea that are quite close to each other, where you have to go from where you are into the city centre, and then back out again. And I’m sure—. Tom’s nodding there; he’s well aware of that as well. And we’ve got these problems. What we haven’t got is enough integration, have we? We’ve got a very good train station—Transport for Wales—in Llansamlet, but you look at the bus timetable, and, although some buses stop there, outside, it’s not actually very easy to find on the bus timetable. It’s little things that can make such a big difference, and they’re not things that are going to cost you any money.

I think that perhaps somebody needs to look at how you can actively travel from where I live in Morriston to, let us say, Briton Ferry, by bus and train, and how we set about doing it, because sometimes once people start their journey in their car, it's very difficult for them not to say, 'Well, I might as well continue.' I do that when I go to Cardiff. I could stop at Port Talbot Parkway, get the train from Port Talbot Parkway, and engage in all the changes to get to the bay, but once I've got to Port Talbot, well, I'm a third of the way there—why stop?

Well, I think we would entirely agree on the point about integration, and—Peter was touching on this—one of the key driving aims or missions, now, for Transport for Wales is to do that integrated approach. Our transport Cabinet Secretary is very clear on the need for integration and for seamless moving between different modes of transport in the way that you've just described. I guess what you've neatly just demonstrated is the point that we were touching on a few minutes ago around the predominance of the car in transport thinking for many decades, and that has led to the situation that you've described where you have a hub-and-spoke problem, potentially, in urban areas. You've got to go into the centre in order to come back out again, and also your point about how once you've got to a particular stage in your journey, is it really worth stopping in order to move on to a different mode? I think we would all entirely understand the point you've made there. So, we are trying to shift that approach. It's taking time, it will take a lot of investment, and it takes behavioural change. But that's ultimately where we're driving towards, or aiming towards, sorry, without using the 'driving' word.

Thank you. Can I raise something that was raised with us by Guide Dogs for the Blind, and and to me by one of my constituents? You have these really nice cycle paths, you have these really nice roads, and everything's nice, but you don't delineate it properly by colour, so that if you're going along—and one of my constituents fell, and some people with guide dogs have problems—there's not that big change from black to white. There are sort of different shades. It looks very pretty. I think 'pretty' is really top of the list when doing these things, when people are designing these schemes, but 'safety' should be higher than 'pretty'.

Well, I think we've learned a lot along the way. We have, as policy makers within central Government. I know TfW have learned a lot, in terms of overseeing delivery and implementation and working with local authorities and with regional structures. But we are also doing a lot now, I think, to push forward on that more inclusive agenda to make sure that we are providing facilities across Wales that are fit for purpose and, as you say, put safety first. That includes who we're talking to to help inform the works that are put in place predominantly at local level but with supporting national guidance. I don't know, Natalie, whether you could pick up Mr Hedges's point about how we are involving others for inclusive transport. The Cabinet Secretary is very strong on this topic.

Yes, it's one of the key areas where the design office in TfW has been tasked to work with people at the access and inclusion panel at TfW, but also a wide range of groups, in terms of finding design solutions that work for everyone. It's really hard in some circumstances to find something that's absolutely perfect, so it's at least, then, finding something that, in that location, is understood by the users and works, and is designed in the best possible way. So, we're reviewing the active travel Act design guidance at the moment. Again, it's one of those areas where we want to really focus on tackling those designs that keep causing problems. They may be good in theory but don't quite work in practice, so we're looking at those in particular to try and pin down what are the issues, how can we improve on them, and that is with very intensive involvement of people with disabilities and other access needs. So, it's definitely something that we recognise.

Thank you. Something else I would like to raise—. And I know that the amount of money has gone down by £5 million. I'm often less keen on how much, but how it's spent. I know that in Swansea, which I know better than anywhere else, we have gaps in the cycle paths. The gaps are taking you across roads, and consequently parents with children avoid it, because they're quite happy to take their children along a cycle path; they don't want to have to cross a main-ish road with 60 mph limit when they get there. What are you saying about filling these gaps, because if you fill the gaps, you'll increase the number of people actively travelling?

I don't know whether Peter wants to come in on this. Just on money, we've done our level best to preserve the core funding that goes out to local authorities, because we feel that that's very important for their planning work and also for continuing to develop the pipeline of schemes and activity that comes forward. But Peter was leaning in at this point, so I might turn to him.

Thank you, Andrew. I think that this is an important point that the Member is raising because it prompts a question on what is the correct balance between major capital schemes and the minor works schemes, because as we've just heard, a parent making an active travel decision with a child will judge their journey by its weakest link. And even if 95 per cent of it is all absolutely perfect to standards, a segregated path or a shared-use path, if there was one road crossing, well that will colour the judgment, which is understandable from a human perspective. So, one of the things that we have sought to do through the funding allocations this year is to put a higher proportion on minor works, because these can unlock much longer journeys, and I think that the balance between the amount of money that we put into those versus the bigger capital schemes is something that we need to keep under review, for the reason that the Member highlights. 

Okay. When I was leader of Swansea Council in the 2000s and then cabinet member for highways, I set about allocating 1 per cent of highway maintenance money for cycle path repairs. This belief that cycle paths will never deteriorate seems to exist amongst many highway engineers. I've now got Swansea Council's highway department saying that they've had to spend all of their highway money on roads and they can't spend it on repairing cycleways. Can you confirm to them that they can spend it on looking after cycleways? Can you also go along and suggest to your Minister that a 1 per cent allocation of highway maintenance on cycle paths will make a big difference in ensuring that they're not full of potholes?

Go on, Peter. 

We can certainly take that away. As the Member will appreciate, most of the significant costs on the road network are caused by the heavier vehicles, therefore maintenance on active travel routes should be an order of magnitude lower, albeit that it is increasingly important as you create more of them. This is something that we have taken into account in some of the recent road funding interventions that the Government has made, in particular the local government borrowing initiative, which is providing greater revenue funding to local authorities to fix things relating to roads, and we don't believe that that needs to be restricted entirely to the motor car.

Well, as you heard from my question, I actually want to reduce it to two orders of magnitude less than that being spent on the highway. 

The final question from me is: what impact is setting the 60 per cent threshold having on local authorities, for example around continuity of staffing in areas covered by the remaining 40 per cent, and is the Welsh Government applying any tolerance to this? And also cross-border: I know that if you drive through Pontarddulais and you drive into Hendy, you only know you've moved because of the sign. I also know that you've only gone from Ystalyfera to Ystradgynlais when you cross a bridge. Although we talk about local authorities, there are an awful lot of places where they might be in one local authority but they're affected by what happens alongside them.

Part of this, I think, is about the work that we're increasingly trying to do at the regional level. I accept the point that you make about boundaries, because even if you're working across regions, you'll have boundaries at the regional border, but at least part of what we're trying to do with that is to come up with more integrated solutions at the sub-national level, but which are wider, bigger than the immediately local. And that's a significant focus of our work in terms of where we allocate money in future and how we proceed with transport policy more generally. 

On this split, the 60:40 and the tolerance, I think that this is largely about development work, if that's right, but let me bring in colleagues who are the masters of the detail.

Well, this comes back to the question that we were talking about, about the balance of expenditure, how we're not just balancing the major capital with the minor works, we're also balancing the total capital with how much is spent on staff resources and development work. And certainly, what we're working closely with the corporate joint committees on, as they come to the closing stages of preparing the regional transport plans, is striking that balance between having a ready pipeline of schemes, but not having too great a pipeline, which would involve spending a disproportionate amount of work on high-level initial development work when that money could be spent, let's say, on the minor works that we've just described. You want a pipeline, but you don't want to be gold-plating your pipeline at the expense of near-term delivery. That's the challenge here.

Okay—

Sorry, I was just going to say that we think that's best addressed at a regional level, for the cross-border reasons that you've just set out. 

I just want to say that I chose purposely Ystalyfera and Ystradgynlais because they're not in the same region, are they? Ystradgynlais will be in the Powys central Wales region and Ystalyfera will be in the Swansea bay city region. So, it's not just—and I'm just trying to make this point—where you're in the same region, it's when, sometimes, you go into another region, and that can be very important. That's just a point I wanted to make; I don't need a reply to it.

Yes, we're a bit tight on time and, again, there isn't time to reply, but I'd also make the point that this also applies to national boundaries. Where I live, it's crossing into Cheshire and Shropshire, particularly, day-to-day, for work, for accessing services, for practical matters, not simply leisure. Right, can I begin with Tom Giffard, please, to take up the questions?

Thanks, Chair. I wanted to ask about the active travel fund for 2025-26. So, why has the Welsh Government decided to limit local authorities to one competitive main scheme for 2025-26, and what impact will that have? For example, has it meant that some schemes for which local authorities have developed plans, using earlier years' funding, have now ended up on ice?

It's a very fair question. Originally, when we got going on the budget planning for this year, we were facing a very significant set of budget constraints, both in relation to transport, but also more widely across Welsh Government operations and the wider public service. Obviously, later on in the autumn, we got confirmation from the UK Government that we were going to have a budget uplift and that's been significantly helpful, but at that point in proceedings we'd already got to a place where I think most local authorities had done their initial planning, and changing tack midstream wouldn't have been terribly helpful.

My recollection, but Natalie and Peter will correct me, is that, if we're talking about significant schemes, relatively few local authorities are going to be doing more than one or two a year anyway. We are trying to be as flexible as we can be with the money, but that's basically where we are for the cycle for this year. Is that fair, Peter? I don't know whether you and Natalie want to come in? 

I think that's fair, but, obviously, there may be follow-up questions. Yes, the budgetary situation changed during the very final part of the last calendar year. And because, as Andrew said, in practice, only a small number of local authorities tend to have funding for more than one main scheme, when that funding situation changed, we prioritised taking core funding to its previous levels and maintaining that, rather than putting more money into capital schemes—into the main schemes, the major schemes, I should have said. And this all comes back to the balance between how much you want to spend on future development, how much you want to spend on capability and minor works and how much you want to spend on the bigger-ticket capital schemes. And that's what we're trying to strike the right balance on.

Okay, thank you. Can I ask, then, how the funding that was allocated for the competitively assessed bids compares to what local authorities were seeking for the schemes that they put forward and the extent of any match funding that would typically be involved in projects like that?

We don't, I think, as a rule, require match funding, because sometimes that would impede particular local authorities from engaging, although, as you hint in your question, match can make a big difference, particularly if you've got a scheme that runs over a number of years. And it may be that our funding is limited to a particular annual cycle, but local authorities may have a little bit more flexibility, so they spend their money first and ours later, or vice versa, depending on what the arrangement requires, normally the latter. I don't know whether Natalie has a sense of what local authorities were bidding for versus the allocation that was available, and then, of course, there's the further thing, which is how much of that then tracks through to delivery and spend in a given year. But, fundamentally, the overall pot of money available for this year was down, I think, 9 or 10 per cent compared with where we had been the previous year. But as I touched on and as Peter's set out, I think rather more clearly than I did, we have sought to protect the core funding as part of that, so that we're not yo-yoing funding arrangements for local authorities, because that just impedes planning. And as you know only too well, anything that involves capital funding where you are bouncing around just causes problems in the delivery chain. So, trying to keep that as consistent and as predictable as possible for planning purposes is hugely important.

But, Natalie, do you have any sense of Mr Giffard’s question, the answer to that one about scale of local authority ambition compared with allocations available?

Yes. I thought I actually had the figure for this year in front of me, but I don't have it right now. It was higher, but not actually that significantly higher, because of the reduction in the value. So, it was only marginally more than we actually allocated, but that's because we obviously asked for fewer schemes. So, we have allocated to most schemes that were at a stage of readiness that could be supported.

Okay, thank you. I'm sure you'd be happy to write to the committee with that figure afterwards, obviously, once you've got it; that's fine.

Can I ask how consideration was given to which schemes were allocated and how they lined up against the prioritisation tool at Transport for Wales?

That's a great question to which I don't immediately have the answer. I don't know whether Natalie or Peter know.

Well, I'll just start on that and bring in Natalie to talk about how the prioritisation tool can be used in practice, because I think that's an important thing to cover. But as we've described, what happens is we set expectations to local authorities about how many schemes to bid for, which in this case was one major capital scheme, and they then choose the scheme that they think best meets the criteria we set out in the grants guidance. So, there'll be a fair amount of selection at local authority level. We were not, in practice, choosing between lots of different local authority schemes, for the reasons we've described. What we were doing with the support of Transport for Wales was more quality checking, that there was sufficient data, evidence analysis, and evidence ready for us to merit providing funding to those schemes. But perhaps Natalie could talk through the prioritisation tool, because, going back to the Chair's opening remarks, that's one of the developments that's taken place in the past year in terms of Transport for Wales, this capability to support local authorities.

I think it's important to highlight that the prioritisation tool works on the relative prioritisation for each local authority at the moment. So, it's not a national prioritisation tool. It doesn't give us the national top 10 or top 25. For each local authority, it works out from their network which routes are the ones that are the most likely to give that significant use and motive. So, for each local authority, we expect that they put forward the highest priority schemes, and that is something that the regional advisors and TfW go through with the local authorities when they're preparing. They have discussions pre-application, what they should put forward or what could be put, and then that's where the conversation around the prioritisation tool comes in.

The prioritisation tool isn't the definitive answer; there is scope for flexibility, because it hadn't at that stage, for example, been able to account for employment sites. So, there has to be some local knowledge applied as well. So, it's not the black-and-white kind of ‘yes/no’ answer, but it's definitely been used in the process of identifying the schemes. And if a local authority were to apply for funding for a scheme that's very low on their respective hierarchy of the prioritisation tool, it would definitely not be approved for funding. But it's not a national tool as such.

Can I ask whether the minimum requirements that have been introduced around equality impact assessments and monitoring and evaluation plans have resulted in clear improvements in that regard?

Shall I answer that?

Go on, Natalie, yes.

This is the first year—. We have always asked for this information, but this is the first year that it was made mandatory, basically, as a red line that applications had to be supported by this additional documentation or by assurance that it exists. So, TfW have reported that it definitely has improved; it's not perfect yet, but definitely it has led to much better evidenced applications.

There are three schemes that appear to account for about half of the competitive allocation, or I think over half of the competitive allocation, so in Monmouthshire, RCT and Wrexham. What impact is the Welsh Government expecting to see from those schemes? This is the classic value-for-money test, I suppose.

I don't know whether Natalie has the detail in front of her. I've got the list of schemes and the amount of money associated with them, in terms of headline outcomes from those.

If I may start, then Natalie might want to come in on those three specific schemes. I'd say the value-for-money standards are the same, regardless of the size of scheme. We need value for money demonstrated no matter what the size. What the result will be in terms of outcome depends upon what these schemes unlock. We've just described earlier in the session how sometimes a minor scheme can unlock a much longer route, but sometimes a larger scheme in its own right, without some associated minor works, can do the same. So, we need to take into account where this fits into the overall network, in particular, what exists on either side of it, because, at the end of the day, we are trying to build a network for a new mode of transport, and the more links and connections it has, the more value you get from the network. You get benefits greater than the sum of their parts. You get the network effect. That is slow to come when you're starting a network and just doing individual parts. But I'll hand over to Natalie to reflect on those three schemes specifically.

I think Peter is absolutely right in terms of the scheme alone. For example, often the most expensive schemes are bridges. Obviously, they are really important, they sometimes address a massive safety issue or they create a link where there wasn't one. So, depending on the scheme, it can have a huge, huge impact in terms of making active travel possible for the first time in some cases.

So, other ambitious schemes that tend to be expensive are like the Wrexham scheme. It's a really complicated scheme in terms of an inner urban environment with lots and lots of movement and traffic. It's an enabler to basically make journeys possible that weren't possible, but it is not—. They're in phases, they'll take many years, they'll rely on the other network links. So, by themselves, you wouldn't see an immediate—. The first phase is put in, and you don't necessarily see a transformation yet. It is a multi-year project to put these networks in place and connect them, as Mike Hedges said, where people actually live to where they want to go. Even if you put in a multimillion-pound scheme, it in itself is not necessarily going to solve the problem entirely.

Okay, moving on to other active travel related funding, can I ask whether the absence of any Safe Routes in Communities allocation for three authorities, Denbighshire, Anglesey and Pembrokeshire, reflects the fact that they didn't bid or that the bids were rejected? If it's the latter, why did those bids not meet expectations?

I may be wrong here, but I don't think we necessarily expect applications to come through in all cases, in all years. There'll be a lot of work, as you've hinted in other questions, Mr Giffard, there are a number of other potential routes to market to achieve similar ends, and there are other funding pots. We might come on to some of that. Indeed, we run other grant schemes associated with this area of business as well. But I don't know, in respect of the specific authorities, whether Natalie has any additional intelligence.

They did not submit a bid.

Okay, thank you.

If I may, I think this reflects the situation where, at the moment, the Welsh Government has quite a large number of different grant schemes. So, if you're a local authority with a relatively limited number of officers, you probably have to make a choice about which of the grant schemes you want to bid for, because you may not have the capacity to bid for them all, especially if they require prior development work in order to substantiate the case for a bid. So, this is one of the reasons why, increasingly, we are moving to a more regional and combined model, whereby there will be fewer grant schemes to bid for and regions and local government will have greater power around the resource split between different areas.

Okay. So, I suppose, then, in trying to paraphrase your answer, the system, as currently designed, does benefit larger local authorities, right, and an authority like Cardiff probably does have the capacity to be able to bid across multiple fronts for multiple schemes in a way that some of these authorities, like Anglesey, might not.

I'd say that there would be something in that if it weren't for the support that Transport for Wales provides—that's the big new development—with the increasing in size team that is there for all local authorities, regardless of their size and capacity. And similarly, that's why we do not, as a matter of policy, require match funding, because of the reasons you just stated, which would offer a bias towards those larger authorities that can put money in. But you are generally right that there is a tricky balance between the expectations that we put upon the expenditure of money and the capacity of those organisations to meet those expectations. That is a tricky balance that I acknowledge.

I'm sorry, Chair, I'll need to hand back to you at this point.

Okay, thank you. I know that you have to temporarily leave us, but I welcome our colleague Natasha Asghar, who's joined us to ensure that we have enough Members present to continue.

Can you provide us with any notable examples of schemes funded through other local authority transport grants for 2025-26 that do have a strong active travel element?

I don't know whether Natalie's got any detail on that. I mean, my recollection is that a number of local authorities had drawn money down from, for example, UK Government funding streams, the shared prosperity fund being one and I think some of the levelling-up funds. Again, my sense overall was that they were targeted less at connecting places and possibly more at the visitor experience. That might be a slightly unfair characterisation, but I think there's probably more in that realm than in the sort of prioritisation that Mike Hedges was referring to. We have other funding mechanisms, as Peter has set out. I don't know, Peter, do you or Natalie want to pick up on the specifics of the Chair's question?

I'll look to Natalie on the specifics, if that would be okay. But I think this does raise another important issue that was referenced in the Audit Wales report, which is that there are a number of funding sources and often active travel is a component of much bigger other modal transport schemes. So, for example, the story we don't often talk about is how much active travel is being done as part of the A465 Heads of the Valleys project, or indeed how much is being done as part of the south Wales metro rail project, but I'll hand over to Natalie.

Yes, I think in terms of active travel specific or stand-alone components, obviously, we have introduced the active travel fund to remove that from the other grant funding that we have. But, for example, any transport interchange that we have funded in recent years would have had active travel components, and any larger road scheme would have the active travel components built in. As Peter says, our strategic road network schemes are introducing active travel routes alongside and better crossings and things like that. So, yes, the active travel fund specifically removed the ambiguity of having the local transport fund trying to cover everything, to focus specifically on active travel infrastructure. So, yes, they are part of other funding schemes, but wherever it's very specifically around active travel, it should come through the active travel fund and that's what it's meant to do.

Thank you. I won't comment—.  I'm not ignoring you, I'm just—. We got a note this week from Denbighshire County Council, for example, that active travel works are set to restart in Corwen—that was a joint bid with Wrexham to UK Government, combining Llangollen, Llantysilio and Corwen and surrounding areas—and that further funding was secured from the Welsh Government's active travel fund. So, that's an example, which appears to have been missed, in Denbighshire, which combined funding from both Governments in an active travel scheme focused on connecting local communities together, which presumably would tick the box beyond mere leisure or tourism. But, moving on, what, if any, line of sight has the Welsh Government on local authorities' wider spending on active travel, including any schemes that may have benefited from UK Government funding, such as the one I've just referred to?

I don't know—. Natalie, we were talking about this the other day, weren't we, in the context of money that's come in from elsewhere. I think the key thing here is that Transport for Wales are looking across the totality, working with local authorities. So, they're providing advice on a whole range of things. So, in some senses, although the focus is on the active travel fund and associated grant funding from us, they are also helping local authorities where there is other funding available. And as Peter and Natalie have said, we have looked to use all of our key transport programmes to increase the work that we're doing on active travel and to design that into other forms of transport-related capital expenditure. On the UK Government links and funding through those sources, Natalie, have you got anything to add? 

Yes. So, several local authorities have had quite significant funding awarded through levelling-up funding and the shared prosperity fund at some point. I think we have to be frank that the process by which we were involved or Welsh Government was consulted on these projects was a little haphazard maybe. So, at the time, there was an opportunity to comment on the proposals that came forward, but that was it, really, as far as I'm aware. And as Andrew says, the focus then is on supporting local authorities, because some of these schemes were very large, quite tight timescale. So, they put a real pressure on the local authorities in terms of delivery and then potentially competing with the resource that they were able to put into delivery of the programmes funded from us. And so TfW are trying to support local authorities on both of those sides. And so these schemes that are being taken forward through UK Government funding are also trying to get—. They can come to TfW for design advice and knotty issues. So, we are trying to support them, but it's not that we have had a huge involvement in these projects at any stage.

Well, before we break, I'll just conclude, perhaps, by suggesting it might be helpful if Welsh Government was able to collate and, in future, share data on active travel schemes funded either by UK Government or jointly by UK and Welsh Governments in Wales, alongside its own directly funded programmes. But if we can have a five-minute break, if we could return at 10:44 to pick up on the final questions—. Thank you.

Croeso. Welcome back to this morning's meeting of the Public Accounts and Public Administration Committee. Welcome, again, to our witnesses. Mike Hedges will now continue with our questions to them.

Diolch, Gadeirydd. How does the Welsh Government intend to address concerns that changes to the funding arrangements through the regional transport plans will lead to a reduction in support for active travel?

Well, I think, Mr Hedges, that the concerns of those who are who are pushing for active travel to be even higher up the agenda in terms of what we do in transport delivery are understood. I don't think that they are necessarily borne out by what we're starting to receive from the regions, in terms of their plans. Indeed, quite the contrary, and I might ask in a minute Natalie to come in on where we are with our learnings and gleanings from the initial work that we're doing on the regional planning side.

But, fundamentally, the idea here is, as Peter set out a few minutes ago, to get to a point where we are allowing a degree of freedom at the regional level to let players come together, locally and at the subnational level, to make best use of available funding to deliver transport arrangements that work best for them and connect communities in the way that, as you were describing earlier, is most valuable for those communities. So, that's the thrust of this policy approach.

As I say, the fact that we're moving away from very clearly delineated chunks of money for one strand of transport work over another is, of course, going to be a matter of concern to people who are arguing very specifically for those types of activity. But we don't feel that that's what's coming through the initial work on the regional side. But I can see that Peter wants to come in, and then we might go to Natalie for a bit more of what's coming through in the detail.

Thank you, Andrew. I thought that it might be useful if I talk through, in very summary terms, what the safeguards are in the regional transport planning approach with respect to the question. And in very summary terms—we can get into any one of these in detail—I would say they are alignment with targets. So, the regional transport plans have to be consistent with the national targets that have been set, and set out their contribution to those targets. And, as you know, there are in existence already active travel targets, which we will need to review very carefully when we have the first run of data from the Wales national travel survey in. The second safeguard is the Transport for Wales support in those regional teams to support the regions on pipeline development schemes. And those regional teams at Transport for Wales are already supporting the CJCs in the development of regional transport plans. And then, finally, those regional transport plans have to be approved by Ministers before we will put money towards them. So that's the very summary set of safeguards in the architecture. Natalie may want to speak specifically about how active travel is being taken forward through this process.

Yes. So, I think it's—. We understand that people are concerned about the lack of ring-fenced funding, but in some ways—. Firstly, because of the maturity of some of the active travel pipeline, we can see that a lot of this is feeding through into the regional transport development plans or delivery plans that they are preparing. So, we can see that active travel is definitely a completely integral part of the regional transport plans that have been consulted on. So, I think there's no reason to assume that, somehow, people will suddenly lose interest in it if we hand over more of the control at the regional level. Because, as Peter says, there are a lot of safeguards in place, and there is a lot of support, not just from the active travel team in TfW, but the wider regional support team in TfW will work with the CJCs and the local authorities to make sure that they have a deliverable programme of schemes that cover all their modal aspirations. In some ways, actually, it should be easier to promote the integration that we talked about between what we're doing on public transport and what we're doing on active travel, and that the sequencing of these schemes works together, than we had when everything was taken forward independently. So, I think that they are actually an opportunity, as well as something that throws a little bit of uncertainty over how we move forward.

My fear is that local authorities will take the easier, where they can put more active travel routes down, and not necessarily apply themselves to what I talked about earlier—the difficult bits. The difficult bits are the more expensive. They are not going to get very much for their £1 million on doing work to try and cross a major road, whereas, for £1 million, they can do miles of cycle track on the flat, can't they? 

I think we'll want to stay alert to that kind of point. To some extent, that is true now. Theoretically, a local authority could choose to take that approach. We would be relying on the range of the safeguards we already have, and the work of TfW to help us with helping local authorities with prioritisation is part of that. But I think the general point is well made, Mr Hedges, and we'll have to be alert to that in practicing the safeguards that Peter has described under the new regional arrangements.

Just moving on slightly, and whether the Welsh Government is confident that regional working arrangements through the corporate joint committees are now mature enough to support the changes.

Well, I think we think they're getting there, and we've done a lot of work, including through TfW, with our regional partners. But, in terms of timescales and what we expect of delivery, I don't know whether Peter or Natalie want to come in.

I think a couple of years ago I would have been much more worried and less positive than I am today. So far, the regional transport plan development process is going reasonably well, and the plans are on course to come to Welsh Ministers very soon, later this year. They are already out in draft form being consulted on for people to engage with, and, actually, the process so far is going reasonably well, I would say, and the support that Transport for Wales is offering also appears to be working. But, clearly, this is a very major change, which we need to keep under very careful review, and I would certainly, in terms of grants management, think about the next financial year, 2026-27, as a transitional year. This is not a big-bang approach in all administrative respects, and it's a careful balance between enhancing the democratic accountability of regional government with providing sufficient checks and balances, both on adherence to national targets, but also to the general high standards we've set with expenditure of public money, for example in relation to audit, for example in relation to monitoring and evaluation.

Coming back to a question that Tom Giffard asked earlier about Ynys Môn, Anglesey, which didn't have any money, is it not a danger that Ynys Môn, which is flatter, easier to use for cycling and walking, may well lose out to Gwynedd, for which I will use the words 'mountainous' and 'hilly'? It's much easier to travel actively on the island than it is on mainland Gwynedd, yet Gwynedd had money this year and Ynys Môn didn't.

These are—. Colleagues can comment on the specifics, but these are the kinds of risks that we need to manage in any arrangement. Back to the point I was making a minute or two ago, whether that's stuff that we're trying to deliver out through the national level of our national infrastructure in terms of governance, or at the regional, subnational level, I think these are things to be alert to. You've got a range of factors: size of local authority, capability of local authority, the funding, as you've just hinted at, their geographical situation. All of these things are relevant, and they are things that we need to be alert to, I think. As I say, the point is fairly made, but I think the same risks apply now as they would under any new arrangement. Colleagues, is that fair? Do you want to come in on the specifics?

Just to clarify, maybe, that it was only for the Safe Routes in Communities fund, where Anglesey didn't bid and wasn't awarded funding. They do have a scheme under the active travel fund and, of course, their co-allocation, so there should be a healthy amount of activity in Ynys Môn.

Because it's much easier. I mean, apart from Parys Mountain, there's not much to climb in Ynys Môn, whereas a large part of Gwynedd is very mountainous. I'll leave it at that; I think I've made my point.

What impact will these changes have on what the Welsh Government expects of Transport for Wales and the funding it has been receiving, which has helped boost its own capacity?

Sorry, with that question, Mr Hedges, did you mean by moving to the regional arrangements, or were you thinking about—

Yes, I'm on regional arrangements.

Yes, okay. So, we've been working very closely with TfW on all this. I don't think there's any plan to diminish the size of the team—as I mentioned earlier, now, give or take, 20 strong working on active travel. That set of facilities in people terms, the human resource associated that, should still be there, and we are building relevant money into TfW's operations to take account of that. But Peter has been working closely with James, as he mentioned—James, the chief executive—earlier in the session, and he might want to come in.

With apologies for the proliferation of teams, but Transport for Wales is getting quite big now, it's worth saying that there are separate regional teams from the active travel team. We have talked a lot over this session about the capability and expertise that the active travel team and their design office are providing to local authorities, and that all still stands. In addition, we have been working with Transport for Wales to build regional teams for each of the four regions, and it is those teams that are currently supporting the CJCs in the development of regional transport plans. And going back to something we mentioned at the very start of the session, those regional teams are multimodal, so they look for the opportunities to combine bus and active travel, or rail and bus, or indeed active travel and road. So there are two sets of support to local government at the moment.

Can I move on to active travel scheme design? What's the Welsh Government's perspective on how and when divergence in design guidance may be appropriate? 

Natalie touched on some of this earlier, and she may want to come back in in a moment. I always have to remind myself to be a bit careful on these points, because I think I'm right in saying that ultimately these are all matters for highways authorities, and ultimately a local authority, for most of what we're talking about here, has responsibility for schemes, how they're delivered, whether they've met statutory requirements. And for us, we have to be careful not to get in the way of that set of responsibilities or that accountability at the local level.

I think we're in the process of reviewing the active travel Act guidance, in light of a number of developments over recent years, but I wonder whether Peter—yes, perhaps Peter in the first instance—wants to come in.

I'm happy to start. This is an important debate. So, if you think about transport as a whole, standards play an exceptionally important role in all transport modes. Certainly on the road network, all roads are built to standard, except if there is a departure from standards. And departures are not necessarily bad, by definition. What is important is that you go through a clear process and that you have an audit trail that justifies the derogation from those standards. So, there are lots of departures from standards in many roads projects, and similarly, there are lots of departures from standards in what Transport for Wales are doing on rail and the south Wales metro. As I say, they are not necessarily bad, but they need to be codified and justified and proportionate. And what we are trying to do with active travel, which is a much newer mode of transport in transport planning terms, is bring that rigour of proportionality and decision making into the design. So, on the one hand, we've discussed today how to make schemes as inclusive as possible, and that often means that you want to raise the standards, let's say with respect to clear segregation or colour of pavement or tactile paving. On the other hand, there are some situations where, let's say, you have an immovable object in the middle of what would be otherwise a very long active travel path. You would not want to say 'no' to the entire path just because the width has to narrow by an additional 30 cm at one point. What we are trying to do is bring in that sense of proportionality that we have in the other transport modes, and a lot of that comes down to the governance and the process that you put around derogations.

You're quite right that local authorities have great discretion, but they also know that if they do things you don't like, their funding next year is likely to be reduced. So, I think that it's a bit like the 20 mph, 30 mph—there are roads and local authorities that would have been kept at 30 mph, only A and B roads, which they haven't done because the guidance doesn't allow them to make some of these A and B roads, especially B roads, 30 mph. You’ve got the same thing here, haven't you? Yes, local authorities have absolute discretion, but if you want money next year, then you do as you're told.

I can see Natalie wants to come in. She's itching to come in, so I'll pass to her. 

Firstly, we don't couple future funding on current performance, which has been criticised, actually, in some cases, I suppose. So, that has not been a problem so far. I think our active travel Act guidance sets out what we think ‘good’ looks like, and, as I say, we are reviewing it, but also it cannot foresee all circumstances, and Wales has got particular topographical challenges, tight towns, all these things. So, we absolutely think that the guidance needs to be applied for flexibility. I think that's what Peter's point is about—just being really clear why you're deviating from what it should be, that you've looked at all the options, and that all that is recorded and logged. Again, that is something that the regional advisers in TfW and the design team can support the local authorities on, and do support the local authorities on, to make sure that they haven't just jumped to what was the easy thing to do, but actually have looked at what are the wider options, even thinking out of the box by rerouting completely going one way, or whatever, and that they basically have come to the conclusion that this is the only way of doing it, and therefore it is being done, and they're not funding anything in future.

Thank you. And you'll be pleased to know the last thing from me is whether the Welsh Government recognises concerns raised within the committee's consultation responses about developments involving section 106 agreements not having to conform to active travel design guidance, and if so, what can be done about it?

This is a tricky one, and you and I have talked about this in other committee sessions, Mr Hedges. In principle, it's a very good idea to have active travel outcomes secured through planning gain. The operational reality tends to be that there are lots of demands on section 106 agreements—a whole slew of things potentially in the mix that a local authority wants to try and build into a particular project. And that's not to say that active travel isn't important, and it's not to say that, in some cases, active travel isn't part of that conditionality associated with the planning decision, and we've got examples of where that does happen. But I suppose it's best summarised by saying active travel is fighting with a lot of other pressures for access to that funding through the planning process. Natalie, is that—? You're much more closely involved with the day-to-day detail on this. Is that a fair assessment?

I think it is, and it's something that we want to pick up with the training offer that TfW are developing, where they try and develop modules specifically aimed at people working in development control, to try and help them be firm on the requirements that they should put in place, both with insights and how they're connected to the current network in terms of what they can ask and should ask for. So, yes, it's something that we recognise and it's on the to-do list.

Sorry, just one other thought. The Act does—what's the word I'm looking for? Bind? It does apply to the whole of a local authority's operation, so it needs to be taken into account. None of that is taken away by anything that I or Natalie have just said. I guess it's about how we make more of a practical reality of quite a difficult set of competing demands, which is implicit in your question.

Okay, thank you very much. 

Thank you, Mike. If I just go back to regional transport plans with one specific question, what oversight will the UK Government have when, for example, the north Wales ambition board has been merged into the corporate joint committee, which is charged not only with delivering the devolved transport plan but also the programmes jointly agreed between both Governments in relation to transport and infrastructure programmes under the north Wales growth deal?

It's a very good question and colleagues might want to come in on specifics associated with transport, but generally that is a set of discussions that we're having with UK Government at the moment, where, as you say, there are a set of overlaps between different governance mechanisms operating at the sub-national level, and that includes stuff that is wholly within Wales's boundaries or activity that spans boundaries and is, in that context, mainly England and Wales we're thinking about here, rather than other bits of the system, but I'm sure similar issues may apply to Scotland as well. I don't know if Peter wanted to add anything on how we make the operation work on regional transport. 

Just very briefly, it's probably important to distinguish between the scheme level and the overall level. At the scheme level, certainly you would not expect UK Government to put money in without strings attached, and that's no different from the Welsh Government. If we put money in, then we want to know how that is being spent, we need to monitor and evaluate it, and I would expect those types of terms and conditions, if you will, to be attached to that scheme-level funding. I think there is a general, broader question around the links between UK Government and the CJC architecture, which will be picked up at the CJC level, and reflect the types of issues that Andrew was reflecting.

Okay, thank you. We move on to further focus on behaviour change, which you have referred to in a number of your answers. You also previously referred to the Senedd active travel cross-party group. What do you consider the roles of both Welsh Government and Transport for Wales to be in the context of that cross-party group's call for a structure to deliver professionally designed behaviour-change interventions for active travel and a centre of expertise?

There are a number of components to this, and I'll get going, Chair, and then colleagues can come in. We've touched, as you said, briefly, on the work that Transport for Wales are leading and pulling together in relation to tools for local authorities in relation to promotion of active travel and for work on that behaviour-change side of the equation. That's support of what's happening at the local level. There's also a lot of work that Transport for Wales is doing itself. One of the things that we've found—this is not specifically related to active travel, but more generally—is that there are some areas where Government being actively involved in pushing a message on behaviour change works effectively, and we can also think of examples where Government's involvement hasn't necessarily worked. And actually, in some cases, the brand of Government involved in a behaviour change can potentially become an impediment to making that change happen. So, there's got to be a degree of sophistication about how we do this. Some voices, some channels, are better at achieving behaviour change and pushing that out through a community than others.

We've got lots of activity going on across Welsh Government. We touched on some of that earlier, around different strategies, whether that's in the realm of health or education and so on, which tie into what we're trying to do on active travel, and from us out into those areas as well. But I don't know whether either Peter or Natalie wanted to pick up on any additional specific points of action.

Well, I'm happy to make a start. I would certainly say that where we have focused for the time being, in terms of building Transport for Wales's capability, is on promotional aspects of active travel, and that is coming at behaviour change from an information and positivity angle. So, you could describe that as more carrot and stick, let's say, although, of course, there is a spectrum of interventions that you can adopt. I would also say that this is probably one of those areas that has been most squeezed, potentially, by limited revenue funding, where we have to make some quite careful choices. We've had to make some hard choices in this financial year; there's a broader range of options for future financial years.

And then just finally, before I bring in Natalie, this is one of the reasons why we are working on the active travel demonstrator town. This is one of the things that we want to learn more about, about where Government can have a proportionate positive impact, as opposed to an unhelpful impact. Because if we were being unkind, another way to describe behaviour change is interference in people's lives, and sometimes Government does that well and sometimes Government does that less well, and we need to learn about what works best specifically in relation to active travel. But I'll hand over to Natalie.

We do run a few programmes, obviously, directly. I mean, as Andrew and Peter said, in terms of the wider communications, we try and weave active travel messaging into other campaigns, as the opportunity arises, and I think that's the right thing to do, to just spread it. Our core programmes that we fund directly are focused on schools, because that is clearly an area that has been identified as, firstly, particularly important in terms of lifelong habits and all that, but also, actually, as having quite a lot of evidence behind it that these programmes are working. So, we've been funding a Sustrans programme for a number of years, Active Journeys, that covers a whole breadth of activities, and then a more focused walking-based programme that Living Streets have been running, now in the third year, and the results from those are really encouraging, and it's something that we find complements other activities. When we're putting in infrastructure investment, and these programmes run at the same time, it does make a big difference in those schools. Some schools have astounding numbers that are now regularly walking, wheeling and cycling to school. So, it's something that we would love to do a bit more of, but I think the focus on schools certainly seems to be paying off. 

Peter McDonald mentioned the demonstrator town concept. Has a location now been agreed, and if so, where? What funding would go with it? Has funding been identified? Where will that come from? And finally, in terms of the demonstrator town and more broadly, how much of this is a two-way behaviour change process where you might change your behaviour having learnt from the lessons gained in the demonstrator town?

On that latter point, Chair, I think that's an entirely fair observation and a very important point. Part of what we're doing here is to learn and work out what that means for how we operate and how we work with partners both at national and at subnational level to make changes. So, there's lots of learning to come from the demonstrator town. I will leave it to Peter and Natalie to talk a bit more about that. We think there's some quite exciting developments on that score. And to your earlier question, we think that there's lots of opportunity for us to test behaviour change points through this mechanism, because it allows us to take a holistic and integrated view of how you get a community to operate in a different way, and, as you have hinted, what works and doesn't work, and what impediments there might be at the national Government level in terms of how we mobilise things too so that there's learning for us. But I'll go to Natalie, I think, probably. 

In terms of the location, after a period of preparatory work, the Cabinet Secretary has written to Powys to agree our partnering with them to make Newtown the demonstrator town and work together with them and TfW on putting together a concerted programme of interventions for Newtown. This project will also be accompanied by an academic evaluation led by Bristol university. We are optimistic that over the next year we are going to develop a programme of interventions. We've already done baseline data collection, and this will be a good way of testing, in a real-life scenario, what is likely to happen when we do combine our infrastructure and behaviour change interventions in a very organised, co-ordinated way, with this strong engagement of the community.

Thank you. What, if any, intention does the Welsh Government have in the near term of using the opportunities arising from recent amendments to the Active Travel (Wales) Act 2013 to require public bodies to take more action to promote active travel? 

Peter may want to come in on this one.

Ministers have decided that we will start with local authorities in terms of the promotion duty. Draft guidance was published, I believe, earlier this year to take that forward. We want to see how that goes with local authorities and then we'll reflect on how the duty applies to a broader set of public authorities.

Thank you. You previously stated that you're looking at experiences in other parts of the UK and internationally around active travel and behaviour change. Can you give us any specific examples of what you're doing in this context?

There are mechanisms that apply across the UK, and also involving the Republic of Ireland, with the five-nations approach. Natalie might want to say a little bit more about that in a moment. We have done a lot of desk research over recent years, and in particular Denmark and the Netherlands score highly for work they've done in this area. We've certainly learnt a lot from their experiences. Those would be the things that most spring to mind. Interestingly, there are a number of colleagues who end up going to other places for other work-related matters. For example, another colleague who’s a keen cyclist was in the Netherlands recently, and came back and reported on a number of matters associated with active travel to me, and it was fascinating to hear that colleague's experience. So, where we’ve got the opportunity to gain experience from people’s travels, and from other countries, we try and take advantage of that. I don’t know whether Natalie wants to add any other specifics, including on the cross-five-nations arrangements.

It’s just something that we regularly have an exchange on with the four UK nations and the Republic of Ireland, to update each other on what we’re planning, what research opportunities there are jointly, what kind of issues we jointly want to tackle, and from that, on specific strands, we then pick up and work together. For example, we all have identified accessibility and inclusion as a key area of work, and we are exchanging with them on those aspects in more detail.

Similarly, the greater recognition of walking. Even though it has always been about walking, wheeling and cycling, I think that walking is more talked about as something that we all want to do. But then, Andrew, you’re absolutely right about the travel. My telephone is full of pictures that colleagues at TfW and Welsh Government send me of things that they see and excite them when they are abroad. So, yes, it is quite a natural learning from international experience that is happening.

We have taken some formal evidence, which I’m sure you’ll be interested in reading about when we publish our report, which may be informative. Can I invite Tom Giffard to ask the next set of questions, please?

Thank you. I just wanted to follow up, briefly, on the last series of points. I think a lot of the discussion that we have around active travel is about going from one place to another, replacing your car journey with an active travel route, whether that be cycling, walking, public transport, whatever it is. I think the thing that’s underrepresented—and I’m just keen to get a flavour from you—is about the benefits of active travel as a leisure activity—for the joy of walking or the joy of cycling. I wondered whether you, or Transport for Wales, or any other partners, have done any work in that area, not so much about the replacement of journeys that would be made elsewhere, but just for the joy and the interest of it.

It’s an interesting point, because there are a number of dimensions to that, aren’t there? One is about how people use their leisure time. Also, going back to the point I was making earlier—although this is a tangential reflection—our visitor offer in Wales partly links to that as well—what are we offering visitors to Wales in terms of where they can go walking, cycling and wheeling, et cetera.

I think the main point I would make there is that we work very closely with colleagues on the public health side, because the biggest single policy imperative here, in terms of the question that you pose, is the benefit to health through getting out and about and walking, wheeling and cycling. Colleagues on the public health side are very alert to that, and, wherever we can, we are using that mechanism to drive that agenda forward. Natalie, was there anything you wanted to add to that?

We completely recognise the value of walking and cycling for leisure. Because 'Llwybr Newydd' has got the hierarchy of modes, and drives us in the direction of focusing more on mode shift, we have been focusing most of our attention on creating opportunities to replace everyday journeys that would currently be made by car, and make it possible for people to walk, wheel and cycle. I think that has rightly been the majority of our effort.

We do, however, recognise the value, for example, of the national cycle network. We do support Sustrans to keep improving and work with local authorities to work on the NCN as a very valued resource, and it’s recognised as a national asset. We are also working at a UK level on the Paths for Everyone programme that makes sure that things like the NCN are accessible for everyone and can be used by all users. So, we recognise the value of walking and cycling for leisure, but our immediate direct effort has been directed at walking, wheeling and cycling as means of transport.

Thank you. I wanted to ask about the national travel survey. Can I ask how far the Welsh Government has gone in involving other key stakeholders and delivery partners in the design of the national travel survey, and what the timeline now is for rolling out the survey and when that data will be published? Is it still on track, for example, for autumn 2026, as previously indicated in the Government's response to the auditor general's recommendations?

To your first question, I know there were a number of workshops held earlier last year. A lot of work has gone into the travel survey, and I think we're expecting to get results next year. We'll get both six-monthly and, I think, first-year results, but on the specifics, maybe Peter or Natalie could come in.

Thank you, Andrew. This is something we're quite excited about, to be perfectly honest to the committee, because we haven't had one of these in Wales before, and we think that—this was represented in the Audit Wales report—this is something we very much need in order to baseline our targets and decide where to go further. I'm pleased to say that we've been able to protect expenditure for the national travel survey, which has been difficult, given elements of it are revenue funded. So, that has been a challenge, but we've protected that money. Ministers have agreed to that.

The pilot has taken place and that has been successful, and we are on course, as Andrew described, to gain sight of the data on the first year next year. There will be, by definition, a discontinuity between this new form of data collection and what we have relied upon on a limited basis from the other surveys that Audit Wales picked up on, rightly. I fear that that is a necessary cost in order to put us in a stronger position in the long term. So we will have to manage this discontinuity for a period, but as soon as we get a time series, we'll be in a much stronger position.

In terms of the auditor general's recommendations, you indicated you would reappraise the cost-benefit analysis, collecting data from a larger sample to provide that enhanced analysis by local authority area. Is that still the intention as well?

Yes. If I may, Andrew, that is still the intention. I think the question there will be where is the sweet spot. It's something we'd very much like to do. Once you get down to local authority level, there are some very small local authorities, and it has quite significant implications for sample size if you need statistical rigour, which I think we do, given the value-for-money challenges that we're seeking to address. So, it may be that we reflect from a regional perspective rather than individual local authorities. But yes, that is something we will keep under active review.

To what extent will it provide for continuity with existing active travel data, and if not, what assurance can the Welsh Government give that it will maintain comparable data collection going forward? Because obviously what we don't want to do is not be able to compare over a long period of time.

I completely agree. It's a different survey with different questions, so what we can't do is pretend that there is continuity with previous types of survey. It doesn't mean that we cannot look in the round at all the data we have and try and come to a qualitative view about what that is telling us. But as you say rightly, and this will be reflected in our future advice to Ministers, the value of this is in its time series. So, if there is one thing to protect expenditure on going forward, potentially in the context of competing priorities, this should be very high on the list, because with each year, the additional set of data will gain us an even greater benefit. So, this is something we will be trying to protect and preserve in the architecture for as long as we possibly can, and ideally perpetually.

Can I ask if there's any data available from piloting the new survey? Is there any indication as to how far Wales might be from reaching active travel-related targets set out in the Wales transport strategy and net-zero plans?

I'll ask Natalie if there are any early insights on pilot data, which is obviously pilot by definition, so we need to be a little careful. This may be something that we can provide a bit more information on.

The pilot was not designed to arrive at useable data; it was designed to test the methods, to test the processes, to test the analysis. It had data, obviously, because there were real questions asked of real people, but it wouldn't be representative in any way. So, we are not advised to use the data from the pilots.

But just to, if I may, make a link to your previous question, Mr Giffard, that will also look into journey purpose, which will get into this question of leisure versus commuting versus other journey purposes. And certainly what we've seen on the wider public transport network, especially on rail, post COVID, is that the proportion of commuting has gone down. Rail ridership, for example, has gone up quite significantly at the weekend, and there's a much broader question across transport about how networks and policies reflect changing journey purposes, because commuting is now a minority of all travel, and what we cannot do is have a commuting bias in our transport planning. 

I agree. Finally then, what if anything is the Welsh Government planning to do to strengthen the collection of data on active travel among school-age children, beyond the examples of research already conducted by other third parties?

This is a slightly tricky area, and I think that Natalie is the guardian of our expertise on this area, because there are data obligations that apply in respect of minors and also we have to think about safeguarding provision as well for children in terms of how data is used, because part of what we would need to know is how children felt about active travel. This is not just about their parents' view of things as well. We have a range of data sources, and we are actually looking at whether there are other things that we can do to gain more information on school-age active travel. But, Natalie, on the specifics.

So, the national travel survey won't cover children under 16. That is something that can't change. So, we are looking to preserve the child travel questions in the national survey for Wales, if possible, although that is at the moment going through a period of change. The best data source that we really have for child travel data is the School Health Research Network survey that operates, and has been operating for quite a while, in secondary schools. It gives us extremely good coverage and very, very good data on that, and that is now being applied to primary schools as well. So, we will be working with colleagues in Public Health Wales and in our research service to try and work out whether this is satisfactory to give us enough data.

I don't know whether you're aware, but Public Health Wales has been trying to roll out a hands-up survey in Wales, which is something that has long been used in Scotland. It's now the third year, and so far the uptake has been relatively disappointing on that one. We've got very good data for some local authorities that have embraced it and have really pushed their schools to take part, but for other local authorities it doesn't give us enough to really draw any conclusions. So, so far that has not been—. So, if that SHRN data for primary schools will definitely be available on an ongoing basis, I think that it is likely that we will move away from the hands-up survey. But that is something that we are going to be discussing with Public Health Wales and our statistical colleagues. So, that's where we are.

Thank you, Chair. 

Okay. Thank you very much indeed. I'll take up the questions again. What do you intend to cover when you publish the annual report on active travel? To what extent have you been able to draw on good-quality reports and data provided by local authorities as part of the reporting requirements on them?

I'll kick off and then colleagues can come in, because this is an important area and the auditor general makes a number of important observations here about the data that we collect, how we use that data and what we report. It is quite a complicated picture, and the team, I know, have been trying to work out how we present information in a way that is most useful and reflects the complexities and the interrelationships between the different modes of travel, back to the point that Peter was making a little while ago about the outcomes that you get from different schemes and how they interrelate. But I think in the first instance what I would say is, and I'm just looking down on my list of points: active travel data information on key areas of active travel expenditure and outputs; impacts associated with relevant new policies, guidance and resources; as well as relevant examples across Government working and an update on our delivery plan. So, those are those are things that are in the mix from the get go.

I was taken with your point earlier, Chair, about what we do in relation to both cross-border work, but also stuff where you've got different funding bodies involved, or funding partners, and how we capture that information. That might not necessarily be for this report, but I think it is something that we should reflect on further. And on the detailed input from local authorities, and how we relate to their duties, I'll perhaps turn to Natalie for the latest position.

The annual reporting from local authorities is varied, so it's not—. Well, there are several reasons for it. Some of it is in terms of the data they collect and the format it comes in; some of it is the timeliness with which we get it or the completeness in which we get it. So, it doesn't really allow us to aggregate to a national level a picture from the local authorities. It does give us good information for some of the local authorities and poorer information for others. So, it doesn't really give a good national picture.

I think that is something that we have recognised and we've been working with local authorities and Transport for Wales to see how we can improve it. Because we do recognise that there are huge constraints and demands on local authority officers, and reporting and monitoring feels like something that is less rewarding maybe than actually delivering schemes. So, we have some sympathy for the difficulties that they face and that we face as a result of it. TfW have just issued to local authorities quite a comprehensive monitoring evaluation toolkit that tries to address some of the issues, like bringing all the information, all the resources, together, making it much simpler, providing more advice and support on how to do it. We think it's probably not going to solve everything all at once, but it should put us on a better footing in terms of going forward.

For example, the Welsh Local Government Association and Ambition North Wales CJC, work with the Mersey Dee Alliance, which in turn has been doing a lot of work on transport matters cross-border with other agencies and stakeholders. Is that information feeding its way into you and if not, should you be making efforts to access it? 

I don't think I have a detailed response to that other than to make my point about where we've got different information sources and where we've got activity that spans boundaries, whether that's your point about England into Wales or Mr Hedges's around what goes across regional boundaries, that's something that we're trying to reflect on and will need to think further about in terms of provision of information.

I know your Cabinet Secretary is familiar with this, perhaps you may wish to have a word with him.

Following publication of the updated guidance, how confident are you that local authorities are now clear about what is expected of them around scheme monitoring and evaluation? 

I might look to Natalie to respond on that one.

I think I've partly answered that. So, I think it definitely gives them greater clarity. It has been developed with them; it's been shared with them and discussed with them. So, whether their capacity to apply it, and to apply it at the right time in the process, is going to be there in all cases, I think remains something that, just from experience, I remain a little bit worried about. But I think in terms of the clarity of what is expected and how we can make it as simple as possible, that's certainly now there, but we'll have to see how the implementation works.

Thank you. What data has Transport for Wales already published against the monitoring framework and where, if it has been published, can we locate this?

Natalie, are you happy to—?

Yes. It is published on the TfW website and we can certainly share a link. If you're trying to find it from the home page, it might be difficult to get past all the ticket buying, but we can certainly share the link, and it has been shared widely with stakeholders, obviously, and local authorities, active travel boards, and all those have been both involved in the development of the monitoring framework and know where to find it. So, there is data there for most indicators; some of it is quasi dummy data, I would say, so it does, for example, refer to very old data where we need to wait for the national travel survey data. So, it uses something that we know is out of date, but it's just there to show what it will look like.

For other aspects, there's better data already. Obviously, the things like the network links, the routes that meet certain audit criteria are of a high quality. The population who are within a certain distance of an active travel route, all those kinds of indicators are fully populated, but we will keep improving and expanding the data and updating, obviously, as it becomes available, and as Peter said, we are all waiting for the national travel survey results.

And Natalie—sorry, just for the committee's benefit—all of that work on the national travel survey will be published, again, through TfW’s website, will it? It'll be a central repository of all that information, I think that's right, isn't it?

I think so.

Yes.

Okay, thank you. Is the Welsh Government's review of the Active Travel (Wales) Act 2013 still due for completion in July, next month, and what are you focusing on in your review of operation of the Act?

So, I think our plan is still to get the review completed by the end of next month. Whether we're in a position to publish then will depend on a number of factors, including making sure we can get everything translated appropriately.

But in terms of the focus of the review, we're trying to take account of the fact that, obviously, we've had the auditor general's report, we've had the cross-party group's report and a number of feed-ins to reviewing how the work that we do on active travel is operating. So, we've got plenty of source material, along with other discussions that we're having with stakeholders.

In terms of the specific focus of the review, I might bring Natalie back in. I mean, I think we're not going to try and cover everything associated with it, partly because, as I've mentioned, there are a number of responses to other analyses that have been done. I think the term of art here is assessing the Act's success in securing new active travel routes and related facilities, and improvements of existing active travel routes and related facilities, and that will be the thrust of the work that we eventually publish. But, Natalie, did you or indeed Peter want to add anything?

Yes, and we don't want to duplicate a lot of the work that has already been done. As you said, the cross-party group has done huge engagement during their review of the Act, and Audit Wales has spent 18 months going over this. So, we are going to focus mainly on filling the gaps in terms of the requirement of the Act, which is, as you say, actually, what has changed. We're also going to look a little bit, we have done a survey of public awareness of the Act, which we thought is an important part of it—have they actually noticed a change as a result of the Act? So, not the Act itself, but of the activity that has resulted from it. Have they been consulted? Have they been engaged in it? So, that's something that hasn't really been looked at by the other reviews so far. So, I think those are the bits that we want to focus on.

And I guess, Chair, just to add to what Natalie was saying there, we'll want to consider this alongside the work that your committee is doing as well, because it sounds like you will be producing thoughts off the back of these extensive evidence sessions that you've had over recent weeks, building on the work done by the auditor general. So, we would want to try and make sure that we were taking account of that, I think, rather than doing something and then having a further set of conversations with the committee. So, maybe I can pick up with clerk colleagues on this in terms of timing, so that we're doing things in the most joined-up way.

Okay. Staying with the review, how will this, if at all, consider how network mapping requirements might benefit from greater clarity on short to medium-term priorities, and/or changes to make them more of a usable resource for the public? How is the review taking account of changes in the active travel landscape since 2013, and planned changes of how active travel will be administered in the future? And finally, how are you engaging other stakeholders in the process of review, or taking account of existing evidence?

So, that last point first, we're having discussions with key stakeholders, but, as Natalie was saying, we don't want to duplicate work that's already been done. We've lots and lots of information fed in already, plenty of learning done. As I was just mentioning, there may well be points that the committee wants to make. So, I think there are plenty of feed-ins in terms of the information that we need for the review. The review will definitely take account, to your second point, of changes in the landscape, because it needs to, and quite a lot has moved on, as we've been discussing through this session, since 2013. So, that needs to be picked up in the review. 

Forgive me, I attempted to note down your first point, but I've missed a key word, I think.

It's whether mapping requirements are being included in the review, and how those might benefit from greater clarity of short- to medium-term priorities.

Yes. Natalie, is that something that you can assist with?

I think this is something that we would look to pick up in guidance, more than looking to change the Act itself. Through the prioritisation tool, I think we have already improved the prioritisation of the routes on the maps hugely, and we are looking to continue working on that.

I think you also raised a point around the usability of the data, and how it can be publicly shared. I think that is something that we have picked up as an issue and are working on with our colleagues who lead on DataMapWales and the geospatial and strategic transport analysis unit team in TfW, because we have found that it's one thing to plot a route, but then actually to be able to link it to the network that it's on is another thing, and it's not always automatic. And so, yes, there's work going on, and that is necessary for it then to be able to be used for journey planning, all those wider things that, ultimately, were an ambition of the Act when it was made, I think. So, there's work going on to try and work out how we can make the mapping process itself better.

In terms of the prioritisation, I think we've done a lot of work already with the prioritisation tool, and that is more nimble than changes to the Act. So, we can do more with guidance updates than we can do with legislative updates.

Thank you. We are now slightly over time, so I'll bring matters to conclusion, unless you have any very short, succinct, final issues you'd like to raise that you haven't already covered in your answers.

I don't think so, Chair. I think you and colleagues have done a good job in covering the terrain today in terms of the things that are live at the moment. There's a big programme of work ahead of us: regional transport planning; what we do around inclusion, and continuing to push hard on making sure that we are making all of our modes of transport as accessible as possible; the work that we've touched on on behaviour change, including what we learned from the demonstrator town project; and then what we were just discussing around data and monitoring and evaluation and how we publish that and make it, in the wider sense, accessible. I think these are key priorities for us in the coming period, and key priorities for the Cabinet Secretary for transport. But, if I may, I'll just ask Peter and Natalie if they wanted to add anything.

I think that's a very good summary, Andrew, of what we're taking away from today's session. The only point I'd add is to emphasise the one that you made a moment ago, Andrew, that I think it would be worth a conversation with the clerks, if this is possible, about how we can ensure that we best take account of this committee's consideration in the further review work that we are doing, so that we can do that in the most streamlined way and gain as much benefit from the committee's inquiries.

Thank you. Does Natalie have any final comments, or are you content? No. Thank you. In which case, I will bring the questions to a conclusion. As always, a transcript of today's meeting will be sent to you for checking for accuracy. Otherwise, I thank you for being with us again today and hope that the rest of your day goes well.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, committee.

At this point, I propose, in accordance with Standing Order 17.42(ix), that the committee resolves to meet in private for the remainder of today's meeting. Are Members content? I see that Members are content. I would therefore be grateful if we could be taken into private session.