Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): I welcome Duncan and Andrew from Cycling UK.

Is the Committee happy for the session to be recorded by Hansard?

I invite Duncan and Andrew to make an opening statement of up to 10 minutes. At the end of that, they can expect questions from members. Duncan and Andrew, the floor is yours.

Mr Duncan Dollimore (Cycling UK): Thank you very much, Chair, and thank you to the Committee for hearing from us today. Andrew and I are from Cycling UK, a UK-wide charity with members and member clubs throughout Northern Ireland. Andrew is our advocacy lead in Northern Ireland, and I am our head of campaigns.

We are all about getting more people cycling, particularly for short journeys. That aligns entirely with the Northern Ireland bicycle strategy, published in 2015. That strategy has ambitious targets for getting more people cycling, which we completely support; we are completely behind the strategy's vision. We would love, therefore, to say that we are here to compliment the Department on the delivery of that strategy, but that is difficult in light of the recent Nothern Ireland Audit Office (NIAO) report that states that there has been minimal delivery on that strategy.

Why are we here? The agenda says that we are here to talk about the active travel delivery plan. However, it is a little difficult to talk in detail about that because we have not seen it. In November 2024, we saw a draft plan that recommended delivery across 42 settlements with a population of over 5,000 outside Belfast. We were pretty alarmed when we saw that draft because it was missing any discernible framework for prioritising what to do first and where and for determining how those decisions would be made. If we had been consulted on the draft, we would have made that point. We responded to the consultation, which closed last February, and we have had no engagement on it since then. You may be about to be given a wonderful plan that provides detailed maps of the routes in the areas that will be prioritised and their order of priority, with a detailed framework for making those decisions, but, frankly, we are a bit sceptical about that. We have not seen or heard anything to suggest that there is such a clear prioritisation framework.

Why does that matter? I will tell a quick "What if?" story. What if, today, instead of talking about cycling or active travel, the Committee were looking at the delivery of health or education services in Northern Ireland and you were asking questions about whether targets were being met or services delivered? Imagine that that was on the back of a pretty damning Audit Office report on the topic that questioned governance, stakeholder engagement and delivery against targets. Imagine that, in the middle of all that, I said, "Just to let you know, we have spent four times more money on all this than we originally told you, the previous Committee and the public that we would spend. But don't worry, because we have a plan. Our plan is to double down. Despite the fact that we have been struggling to meet the existing performance targets, we're going to go big: we're going to go bigger, deliver further and actually increase what we do". If I were to say that to you, alarm bells would start to ring, but that is exactly where we are with the active travel delivery plan — certainly the draft — that we have seen.

As the Audit Office report makes clear, under the Belfast bicycle plan that was published several years ago, we should have had 130 kilometres of cycle lanes delivered by now, but only 4 kilometres have been delivered. A draft plan that says, "We're now going to go big in 42 settlements, with 200 kilometres of delivery across 42 communities outside Belfast", therefore feels like a wish list rather than a plan. I understand entirely why there is a proposal for multiple settlements, because the principles of regional fairness and equity are hugely important in the distribution of public funds. However, if you have the money to build only two swimming pools, you do not build a little bit of one in lots of different towns, because that will just upset everybody and nobody will be satisfied: all you would have is regional equality in the distribution of a poor service.

This is not a pitch for more money for active travel. It will come as no surprise that I think that more money should be spent on it, but some members will have a different view. I suspect that we all agree that the money should be spent well, with a high return on investment. Our concern is this: with the approach in the active travel delivery plan, we are not likely to get that. That comes down to prioritisation. If you have the money and resources to build only 15 kilometres of cycle lane, what do you do? Do you build 400 metres in loads of places that do not connect to each other, so that nobody uses them and the public see all the cycle lanes and think, "Well, that was a waste of money: they do not connect to anywhere"? Rather than that, do you take a strategic decision to prioritise certain areas first and build in two or three places? At the start, that might mean that a community feels that it has been left behind, but what you build will be connected, so you will get more people cycling, the public will see it as a benefit that works, politicians will see it as a sensible use of money, and it will look as though it is a wise investment.

However, that does not appear to be part of DFI's thinking in the active travel delivery plan, because it is based on equity and fairness in distribution across the board. That is really important because it links back to where I started, with the "What if?" when it comes to the money that is spent or that is claimed to be spent. Spoiler alert: we do not think that the amount claimed to be spent is what is being spent.

In 2024, the Department for Infrastructure said, "We are spending about £12 million a year on active travel". In June 2024, the Minister said, "We spent £61 million over an eight-year period. The highest spend was last year: £13 million". In the debates leading up to the passing of the Climate Change Act (Northern Ireland) 2022, Members talked about spending about £10 million or £12 million on active travel. At the beginning of last year, however, the Audit Office started preparing its report, and, by June, miraculously, DFI was said to be spending £50 million on active travel, having done so for years.

It will come as no great surprise to members to hear that stakeholders do not believe the numbers, and the Audit Office flagged that as a major concern. It said that there was a major problem with stakeholder engagement and a danger that if DFI, without consulting anybody, reclassified how it said that it spent the money and what the numbers were, it would look like "window dressing" and be "self-defeating". We already see that that is self-defeating, because we have listened to recent debates in the Assembly and heard questions about what is being spent on active travel. If Andrew appears on 'The Nolan Show' tomorrow, the first question that he will be asked is about whether £50 million is being spent on active travel, when spending was thought to be £12 million or £13 million. By the time he has tried to explain that we do not think that that is what is being spent, the argument has been lost and we are talking about cycle lanes that nobody is using. The narrative being presented is self-defeating and undermines the case for active travel in Northern Ireland.

Linked to that is my final point, which is about stakeholder engagement. If there were a system of stakeholder engagement, there would be conversations about how DFI prioritises projects, and DFI would be asked, "Is it really in your best interests to say that you have spent £50 million and to add to the active travel budget existing spend from other budgets in order to say that you are getting towards the 10% target? Is any of that helpful? Does it help the Committee to do its scrutiny job if there is such confusion about the spend?".

The final Audit Office recommendation that I will mention is about the lack of stakeholder engagement. The report said that there was a desperate need for a stakeholder engagement group, as promised three years ago. At the previous Committee hearing, DFI said that it was excited about that and hoped to get it up and running by May. However, if, three years ago, your community had an issue, and I said, "I understand that. I think that we need a stakeholder meeting about that. Trust me. Leave it with me. I will set up a stakeholder group to start discussing that with you", and I repeated that assurance until a month ago, when I said that I was excited about doing it, you might start to lose patience and be less than excited about the prospect of it happening.

I started by saying that we would prefer to be here to compliment DFI on the delivery of a strategy, the goals of which we massively support. I hope that, the next time that somebody from Cycling UK is before the Committee, we can do that. There is a far greater chance of our doing so if there is a rapid change of attitude to stakeholder engagement.

I hope that that is helpful context. We are more than happy to answer questions.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): Duncan, that was very useful and is a clear summary of where Cycling UK is coming from. You will have watched Committee meetings, so you know what happens. We will ask a few questions, and I will start.

You cited the recent Audit Office report, which was critical of the Department. When it comes to how DFI attributes active travel spend — this is more of a searching, neutral question to see where you guys are on this — my understanding is that some of that money is spent on fixing footpaths and lights.

I know that you are from Cycling UK and that we are discussing active travel, but some people would say that active travel means my mum walking to the local MACE and back, which she does. Is that active travel, and is it legitimate to spend some of the money — I hope that I am getting this right; I think that I am — on making sure, especially for the elderly, that footpaths are safe and well lit?

Mr Dollimore: It can be. Sorry to go into numbers, but I will give you an example. Comber greenway is separate from the road; it is for pedestrians and cyclists only. There is lighting on it. That is clearly legitimate active travel spend and should be coded to the active travel budget. In a response from the Department for Infrastructure to the Committee, I think, the Department referred to Cork County Council spending money on lighting and allocating it to the active travel budget. Cork has many more such greenways or routes, which are separate from the road, than, for example, Belfast. In a similar overall budget, it had a budget line showing £52,000 being spent on lighting.

DFI says that it has only one or two examples of the greenways that I mentioned and that, of £50 million spent, £22·3 million went on lighting linked to active travel. That is just nonsense. That is about lighting for arterial roads, which are lit for a different purpose. The principle that some lighting should be attributed to an active travel budget is perfectly fine, but, as you will probably guess, we are sceptical about the figures that we are being given.

Mr Andrew McClean (Cycling UK): There are some really good comparators for the resource that we have. The top line of the budget that was presented to you refers to dedicated active travel delivery, and everyone thought that that number was "the" number. It is the number that Scotland uses when it talks about active travel investment; it is the number that Ireland, Wales and England use. That is the number, and it was £12 million in 2022-23. It was stated in the Chamber a couple of weeks ago that that had gone up to £18 million. That is a meaningful increase, but it is not £50 million, so, to quote the Audit Office report again, it is "self-defeating" for DFI to claim that it has spent £50 million when the number is £18 million. We would have said that the £18 million represented a good increase in one year, given that DFI will have to accelerate such increases over the years from a really low starting point. Let us talk about that number. It is more realistic to have an Assembly debate on how much is actually being spent; nowhere other than here are all those other things brought into it.

Unfortunately, that approach to the Climate Change Act — I talked to the Audit Office about this — is not unique to DFI. Things become a tick-box exercise. The point of the Climate Change Act was to change things. The point of the amendment was not to build more cycle lanes or make paths better but to get more people walking and cycling. That needs to be the focus, but it seems to have been about saying, "How can we get as close to 10% as possible without actually doing anything?". Spending on active travel just did not increase from £12 million to £50 million. In the past year, it has increased from £12 million to £18 million, so let us talk about that.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): That is fine. I hope that anyone who watches the Committee feels that we properly scrutinise the Minister. Before the session began, we discussed an issue that we have been discussing for quite a while. Whilst DFI has more money this year than it has ever had, there is real budget pressure. The Minister has to make difficult decisions, as do all Ministers, on how to spend money and what to prioritise. Anyway, I am sure that she will make that point next week.

You mentioned the prioritisation of routes, Duncan. You accept the concept that there is only so much money, which is the function of scarcity in economics. In that context, I wrote, "Spend: what would you like to see happen?", and, "Not 20 routes of 300 metres but more chunky stuff". If the Department were to reply to that question, it would say, I am sure, "Equity and fairness of distribution are important — that is what we do — and we don't want to be seen to favour certain areas". What would you like to see prioritised?

Mr Dollimore: DFI has a cycling prioritisation tool that crunches the numbers to answer the question, "If we build it, how many people will use it?". It is based on population centres and, like most tools, requires some context. The short answer is that you have to make a difficult decision. You cannot, with a limited budget, deliver everywhere. That is not to say you cannot deliver anywhere, ever, but you have to start somewhere rather than be in the situation that I described in which you have half a kilometre in each of 25 towns, which benefits nobody. That is not about favouring one area over another; it is about prioritising where you start and having a sequence. However, we do not see any of that in DFI's approach. Saying that we need to be fair and equal and that everybody needs a slice of the pie is attractive, but international experience says that it is a recipe for undermining confidence in active travel, because you will spend money with no return.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): What is that modelling called? Did you say it was the cycling prioritisation tool?

Mr McClean: It is the propensity to cycle tool. A tool for Northern Ireland was developed with DFI, I believe, after the draft plan.

There is a strong comparison to be made — you may have heard about it — with Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council. Duncan and I had the privilege of visiting that council, which is a front runner in developing active travel infrastructure. It has a quarter of a million people, which is about an eighth of the population of Northern Ireland. It is the size of a relatively large town. It has about the same active travel budget as we do for delivering projects year-on-year. That has been guaranteed for 10 years, which is incredible. It has about the same number of staff as we do. It is an eighth of our size, yet it puts the same resource that we have into one town of 250,000 people. We do not say that we have to do that or that our resource should be concentrated in Belfast. In reality, we are not going to be able to spread it across 42 towns and cities and have a meaningful outcome. The big picture is this: it is about getting more people walking and cycling. That has to be at the forefront.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): That is fine. You have managed to fill my list already. I have not even finished with my questions, and everyone on the Committee wants to ask something.

My final question is about stakeholder engagement. Duncan, you expressed frustration at the lack of stakeholder engagement. When the officials from the Department were here, they said that that would start in May; they made that commitment when I asked them the question. In my experience of stakeholder engagement, of which I have had plenty, it is always best to get in early and bring people along with you. When should the Department have started to carry that out, given the wider picture of what we are discussing today?

Mr Dollimore: We should have started it three years ago. We had a meeting with DFI in March or April 2023 to set relationships, when it was not suggested but agreed that there should be a stakeholder engagement meeting. It has been over-thought. We have had explanations along the lines of, "We need to get the remit right", "It is a little more complicated" and, "We need to sort out the governance". It should not take three years to arrange a meeting with willing participants who want to engage, but that is the scenario. It should not take until May to set that up: it should be expedited.

Mr McClean: That is especially poignant for me. We had that conversation the week before my son was born, and he is about to turn three, so I am well aware that it was three years ago. There was a meeting that November that was called the stakeholder engagement forum — it was a small meeting about a specific thing — so we thought that it had started then, but that was the only time that it happened.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): Thank you for that, Andrew.

Mr Stewart: Thanks, gentlemen, for coming along today. It has been a really useful discussion so far. To follow up on stakeholder engagement, I sense your frustration. It is deeply lamentable that the group has not met, and it strikes me that there has not been the engagement that is needed with the people who will be using the facilities, particularly the likes of you. The Audit Office report talked about a "window dressing approach" being seen, almost as though, to deliver on a statutory requirement to spend a certain amount, boxes were being ticked. Is there any coordinated or strategic approach to how things are done? I can point to feedback from people in my constituency, where we saw £600,000-plus spent on a fence that was not required but ticked a box for active travel. Given that every pound is a prisoner, that was not good use of money; it did not fit into any coordinated, strategic approach. That was my opinion and remains so because I have not been convinced otherwise. Do you, as key stakeholders, believe that there is a coordinated, strategic approach to active travel spend?

Mr Dollimore: There needs to be a more coordinated approach. The Audit Office said that our various strategies and plans, from the Belfast cycling network delivery plan to the bicycle strategy for Northern Ireland and the strategic plan for greenways, were not coordinated and that people were working on them without a common understanding of the overall goal. It recommended that there should be an "overarching strategy statement" with timescales, objectives and performance criteria. That is missing, and we are also missing an understanding of what the money will be spent on and how that is to be prioritised. For us, as advocates for spending more on active travel — again, you may not all agree — the worst thing is for the money that is already being spent on it to be spent badly.

Mr Stewart: Yes.

Mr Dollimore: We need to make sure that that does not happen.

Mr Stewart: Absolutely. To what extent will the stakeholder engagement forum be key in directing what needs to happen to make the approach strategic and coordinated, and how do you see it operating within that framework?

Mr Dollimore: I am keen for the stakeholder forum to be established as soon as possible. I do not want it to be delayed by conversations about other things, but wider governance issues need to be resolved.

The other thing that has to be established is an active travel board. That is a governance requirement that DFI has committed to and said that it would meet three years ago. The active travel board in Wales has an independent chair and independent members. We do not know how the active travel board in Northern Ireland will be established. There is a reference to it being chaired by a director at the Department. If the board is made up of people from the Department, essentially, there is a danger that DFI will be marking its own homework. Some of the governance issues that need to be addressed are linked with that, and part of the stakeholder engagement forum's ability to exert influence will be linked with the other governance arrangements.

Mr Stewart: That is interesting. I suppose that one of the few benefits of being so late to the table compared with other areas is that we can look at models of best practice and at where active travel has worked well and what has worked well or gone badly. You pointed to a council area in, I think, Scotland. Which of the experiences of elsewhere in these islands or around the world do you see as a pristine model of stakeholder engagement and the delivery of the strategy?

Mr Dollimore: I have the benefit in my job of seeing how things are delivered differently in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. I can take a bit of a hovercraft view. Different things are done well. Wales does really well on its active travel board — there are independent people on it — and stakeholder engagement. Sorry to be blunt, but stakeholder engagement is worse here than anywhere else that we work: that is the sad reality. Though not always perfect, aspects of it are done better elsewhere, while Northern Ireland has not got off the ground when it comes to meaningful stakeholder engagement.

Mr McClean: You guys will know that one of the unique things about Northern Ireland is that one Department holds all the authority for transport rather than any of it being devolved to councils. The challenge is greater because we do not have that on-the-ground engagement. It is important to engage with councils and local groups. Peter, I know that you are engaged with a group in Ards and North Down. That provided DFI with a valuable way of engaging. DFI engaged well with the group, so there are examples of good stakeholder engagement here, but it is poor overall.

Mr Stewart: I will move on to the spend. There continues to be ambiguity about what is and is not active travel spend, despite there being figures on it; clearly, going by the points that you have made, those have been massaged. What constitutes active travel spend? A complaint that I get from cyclists, alongside there not being enough cycle lanes, is that the rural roads that they use are simply not safe.

Do you believe, for example, that active travel spend could or should be spent on main roads that cyclists use, particularly in rural areas, or should it be for new spend on new schemes or a combination of both?

Mr Dollimore: You can have active travel spend in rural areas. It can be on different types of schemes. In rural towns and villages you might have a traffic-calming scheme, which makes the roads more attractive for walkers and cyclists. Your active travel scheme might involve bringing in a 20 mph limit in a town centre, for example. There are ways in which to do that. It does not always have to be a separated cycle lane. It would be fair to say that there is an element of grey in this. We have come across that element of grey in other countries. The element of grey is never presented where there is a major problem with the overall figures in the way in which it is presenting us with a problem here.

Mr Stewart: OK. Andrew, have you any thoughts?

Mr McClean: It is important to note that we are not ideological on this. As Peter said, it is a challenging time and budget. We are talking about that 10%. The fact is that we are probably at less than 2%. Again, it is not about the 10%: it is about a meaningful increase year on year. We have said that to DFI. We know that there will be years when that is tougher. However, we need to see a meaningful increase based on the figures that we can use to compare ourselves to other places because, ultimately, that is how you know whether you are investing.

Despite the £50 million, Northern Ireland still invests a fraction per head on active travel. We agree with the priorities set out in the Department's active travel delivery plan to connect schools, town centres and transport hubs. Rural roads are not going to be the main gateway for people to start to use walking and cycling to get around: it will be those closer to town centre areas, where there is a greater concentration of people. If you start to dig into the really small active travel budget to repair potholes, you will quickly come up short on both. You are likely to exacerbate the problem if you do not enable more people to travel actively.

Mr Stewart: To follow up on that point: you talked about town centres and schools being involved. Do you believe that there is a collegiate enough approach between local government, the Department for Infrastructure, the Department of Education and DAERA to our reservoirs and the parks around them to ensure that everything that can be done to promote, and create as many opportunities for, active travel and cycling is being done?

Mr Dollimore: There is the active travel board and stakeholder engagement forum. A third forum that is supposed to be coming in is for engagement with the councils and those other Departments. I am sorry to say that I do not know how much progress has been made on it.

Mr Stewart: Maybe we will hear later on. I do not believe that a great deal of progress has been made. I am curious to get your take on it. I think that it would be fair to say that more could be done. OK. Thank you for your time.

Mr Dunne: Thank you, gentlemen, for your presentation. I support cycling and the value of it. The Committee has talked previously about cycling proficiency in schools, and so on, and the value that it brings. We all have memories of it in school and the positives around it.

To come back to the point about road maintenance: in many rural and urban areas there is no option or room for dedicated cycle lanes, much as we would all like to see them. However, we are all in the real world. The basic concept is that, if a road is safe for cyclists, it can be safe for all road users, including motorcyclists. I know that you are, rightly, focused on cycling, but the definition of active travel, as I understand it, covers cycling, walking and wheeling. Do you disagree with active travel money being used to maintain roads to a basic level? Given the financial pressures, improving the roads makes them safe for all users, including cyclists. I am sure that there are examples of a cyclist hitting a pothole on a dark morning or evening and the consequences being potentially lethal.

Mr Dollimore: There are a couple of limbs to that. As an organisation, we have long campaigned not just for better road maintenance but for a long-term approach to road maintenance. To recap: if you are spending your budget on fixing potholes, you are spending it on the wrong thing. The budget should be spent on maintaining the roads so that potholes do not appear in the first place. The problem that we have here and elsewhere is that there is a patch-and-fix recipe for things that are crumbling.

Mr Dunne: There is a crisis on our roads at the minute.

Mr Dollimore: The budget needs to be spent on preventing potholes appearing in the first place by having a road maintenance budget. As I understand it, the deficit for pothole repairs and road maintenance viability in Northern Ireland is in the billions. That dwarfs the £10 million or £12 million that may be spent on active travel infrastructure. The answer to your question is that I am massively in support of spending money on road maintenance to avoid spending money on fixing potholes. Taking money out of the small amount of active travel infrastructure spend — about £12 million or £13 million — is not a solution to the pothole crisis. I am not minimising that crisis; it is the binary choice that I have —.

Mr Dunne: It is not solely about reducing the number of potholes. Mass street light outages, for example, discourage many people, including females and younger and older residents, from walking in the dark. Young children who are not yet confident to cycle on roads will cycle on footpaths, but, as we see in many areas, those footpaths are broken, damaged and unsafe. Priority needs to be given to getting the basics right in order to allow active travel to flourish.

My colleague Keith Buchanan, who used to be on the Committee, often makes the point — he made it again this week in the Chamber — that having cycle lanes to nowhere does not benefit anyone. I am sure that you will agree with that. I am keen to tease out your thoughts on it.

Mr McClean: I have spoken to Keith about footpaths and cycle lanes, and I listened to him in the Chamber yesterday. In fact, we were in touch with Keith about a cycle lane that was recently built in his consistency, because it is odd to us that that seems to be a priority.

To address your overall point as directly as possible, the reality in Northern Ireland is that we are a car-dependent society. The impetus from that is that you start to think that the only thing that we can do is to keep maintaining, but that takes away from what you are trying to achieve. We are trying to get as many people as possible using sustainable transport, whether public transport, walking or cycling, for lots of reasons, including efficiency, congestion, health, air quality and climate change.

If you say, "The Translink buses need good road surfaces, so let us increase ticket prices on public transport", that will discourage people from using public transport and only entrench the problem. If you start removing money from a mode of transport that you want people to move to, you will discourage more people from moving to it, because you are not investing in it as much.

As you say, for cyclists, it is vital that potholes are addressed. I deal with them; I have had close calls due to the condition of the roads. If we want to encourage people out of their cars and on to other forms of transport, where possible, we have to invest in them and take money away from the modes that will do the opposite.

Mr Dunne: I appreciate that. The condition of our roads is discouraging active travel. That is the case in my consistency, and I am confident that it is the case across Northern Ireland.

I have a couple of final points. I am keen to hear about your engagement with the 11 councils. Is that on your agenda? Have you done much on that or will you do much on it?

Mr Dollimore: Because councils do not have highways responsibility in Northern Ireland, we, as a small team with a list of things to do, have not had much council engagement. One of our frustrations is that, in getting to where we are today, we have spent a huge amount of time and resource on trying to get to the bottom of some answers from DFI about the issues that we are talking about today, instead of doing the work that we would like to do; for example, engaging with councils. That has somewhat limited our capacity to be involved in other things.

Mr Dunne: I appreciate that.

Mr McClean: Given that we have a small team, one of our models is about supporting local groups, because local groups have local knowledge and know the roads. Indeed, in your constituency and that of the Chair, we helped to support the start-up of the Ards and North Down cycle campaign group.

Mr Dunne: I met the group as well.

Mr McClean: The reality is that it is those groups that will engage at a local level with councils. Cycling UK is limited in how much it can do on that as a team.

Mr Dunne: One of the council's remits with DFI is the greenway. We have seen the success of greenways, and you mentioned the Comber greenway earlier. I am keen to tease out your thoughts on the shared-path approach for cyclists and pedestrians, which can work in some places. In other places, there are concerns about that model. I am keen to hear your thoughts. I have heard people say that cyclists will run people over, and you will be aware of that. It is about getting the balance.

Mr Dollimore: It all comes down to the volume of use. You can have shared-path use where there are lower volumes of people walking and cycling. It is problematic if you have high volumes of use, especially at particular times of the day. There is guidance setting out criteria for the numbers, although I would struggle to quote the figures off the top of my head. The shared-use question comes down to how many people use a particular path, and you should not have shared use where there is a very high volume of people.

Mr McClean: Greenways, such as the Comber greenway, are fantastic assets for lots of places. I call them linear parks because that is how people interact with them, and they walk their dogs on them. Greenways do not tend to connect people to places along a road; they tend to be separate from the roads. They are good ways to connect settlements and they are good in areas that do not have a public park. However, they are not a strong part of the modal shift that we hope to see.

Mr Dunne: I have a final point, Chair. Is it fair to say that active travel has increased since the COVID-19 pandemic? My experience is that people are walking and enjoying the open spaces and parks that Northern Ireland offers more. Is there evidence to back that up?

Mr Dollimore: I will answer that in a wider context than Northern Ireland. During COVID, we saw an increase in cycling in Northern Ireland, across the UK and in Ireland. It was the biggest increase there had ever been, and it related to the COVID conditions and people not wanting to use public transport. As we came out of COVID, there was a drop in the numbers to a little more than we had pre-COVID. There was a spike in the number during COVID, and then everything dropped back again.

We are not seeing an increase in Northern Ireland, which contrasts with places in England, Scotland and Wales, where there is a more nuanced picture. In jurisdictions where there has been targeted investment, there are massive increases in the number of people cycling. For example, schemes in Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh have produced big increases in the number of cyclists.

However, it is not across the board, and that is because you cannot spread the investment like jam; it has to be targeted. Where targeted investment has happened, there have been huge increases in the number of cyclists. London is the classic example. We are not seeing that in Northern Ireland because we have yet to have the proof of concept where somebody can say, "We did it in Derry. We did it in Bangor. We did it in Belfast, and this is what happened".

Mr Dunne: Thank you.

Mr McReynolds: Thank you both for coming in today. I want to rewind a little to the definition of active travel. When it was previously explained, there was some consternation about how widely it has been applied. When I was elected in 2022, we had informal conversations at the time because Stormont was down, and one of the senior officials said that they were working on the definition of active travel. Do you have comparisons with other jurisdictions for the meaning of active travel and how it has been applied?

Mr McClean: In relation to spend?

Mr McReynolds: Yes.

Mr McClean: Your documents show a couple of strong comparisons that are countrywide. Scotland has a big headline figure of £165 million in 2022-23 for spending on active travel. If you break down how that was spent, the vast majority — 90% plus — was spent on infrastructure. Ireland spent €360 million in the same year, about 90% of which was on infrastructure, which means new active travel schemes. It could mean spending on lighting for a scheme, such as the Comber greenway, but it is new infrastructure for active travel schemes. That is what other places mean when they refer to active travel spend. Compared with the 90% in those countries, when we break down the £50 million for here, about 20% at best could be called infrastructure spend. You can see, therefore, that it is not a grey area but a step change in what we refer to as active travel spend.

Mr McReynolds: As you know, I chair the all-party group (APG) on active travel. In meetings of the APG, we have heard from stakeholders about there being a lack of communication and engagement from the Department, as we have heard quite passionately from you, Duncan. Comms issues arise from that.

You mentioned car dominance, Andrew. Do you think that there is a lack of willingness to engage on active travel? Does there need to be a culture change in the Department? Is there a lack of resources? I do not understand why things are not moving faster on active travel. Do you think that that is an issue just in the Department or is it a wider issue?

Mr Dollimore: I think that there are people in DFI who want to see more people walking and cycling. Having been a little critical about engagement, I want to put it out there that they want to make this work, but something is not working in the system to make it happen. I think that it is a structural issue rather than malign intent or a lack of desire. There are structural issues. Without wishing to be repetitive, more engagement with stakeholders could help to address some of those issues and move this forward.

Mr McReynolds: You have triggered a memory in my head. There used to be an active travel or cycling champion. I remember it being highlighted in a conversation two or three years ago that that person was never replaced. I think that the position had lapsed and the person had never been replaced. The idea, then, was that everyone was a cycling champion, but that is too many people doing one thing. You need a leader to grab an issue by the scruff of the neck and take it forward. Might that be one of the structural issues?

Mr Dollimore: That is a really interesting question. Liz Loughran, who was already a senior member of DFI staff, was made the active travel champion. Somebody from within the Department was appointed to be the active travel champion. That is not the model that has been used elsewhere. I am sorry to refer again to places outside Northern Ireland, but, in England, there were active travel commissioners who were independent and therefore able to tell, for example, a metro mayor of Manchester, "No, you're wrong. That's not how to do it. You have appointed me to be an independent commissioner, and I will give you my advice as an independent commissioner". That is the model that has been applied in other places. If there is to be an active travel commissioner, it needs to be somebody independent who can challenge the Department for Infrastructure. That goes back to the points about governance.

Mr McReynolds: You spoke well about the 42 approaches being taken across Northern Ireland. I remember talking about the Belfast plan when I was a Belfast city councillor. I do not think that we are much further on, and I do not have a great deal of confidence when we apply that across Northern Ireland, given how slow it can be to get schemes off the ground. Given your experience, what do you think is a reasonable and appropriate amount of time to get from conception to boots on the ground and delivering an active travel scheme? I am thinking of a number of locations across Belfast, and it takes years to get there. Based on your experience, what is a reasonable amount of time in which to try to deliver a scheme?

Mr Dollimore: I will give you an example. In 2019, the Bee Network was announced for greater Manchester which was to be a connection of walking and cycling routes across the region. By 2024, 117 kilometres of cycle routes had been delivered, and it was estimated that 160 kilometres would be delivered by the end of 2026. The caveat is that they had a bigger budget. I concede that there was funding and that they had a budget to do stuff, but they still had the idea, concept, design and delivery within a five-year period.

By 2024, they had delivered a 6·5-mile separated cycle route from Chorlton, which is a suburb of greater Manchester, to the city centre at Deansgate. That was not easy to deliver, as there were roundabouts, side roads, major infrastructure and disruption. There were headaches, but it was delivered by the beginning of 2024. That led to a 65% increase in the number of people cycling in from Chorlton. Therefore, there does not have to be a 10-year plan to get something from idea stage to the concept, design and delivery stages; it can be done more quickly. There are examples in many other places where that has happened.

Mr McReynolds: Lastly, Andrew, you mentioned powers potentially being devolved to local councils. Have you had any conversations with the Department on that? I reference that because, when I first became an MLA, I heard about how long it takes to organise the marathon, for example, and to close all the roads. I investigated with the Department the idea of transferring local powers to local councils. Have you discussed transferring active travel? Do you think that it could greatly benefit from that?

Mr McClean: We mentioned it to a previous Minister in a meeting. There is zero thought being given to that at the moment. Duncan and I did a bit of research a while ago on where Northern Ireland was comparable with in respect of who holds transport powers. We found that Luxembourg and Greece are more centralised than other places, but nowhere is as centralised as Northern Ireland. Even in Luxembourg, local municipalities have control over local roads and active travel routes, at the very least.

It is an unusual model; it is almost entirely unique. We think that it should be considered for local routes. There are major positives to having it centralised: it is much easier to connect to different areas, and it is much easier to put in legislation and measures that apply countrywide rather than council by council. However, I do not think that there has been a serious discussion about it yet in Northern Ireland.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Stewart): Maolíosa. Sorry, I forgot that I was in the Chair there for a second. Easily done.

Mr McHugh: Tá fáilte romhaibh uilig anseo.

It is disappointing to hear that you have not been consulted on the draft. Why do you think that that was the case? Do you have any other avenues or forums through which you can present your views on active travel?

Mr McClean: I attended three or four public engagement events that the Department held on the active travel delivery plan, and we submitted a very comprehensive response, along with the public consultation. I cannot tell you why no one reached out to us before and after that. We have had occasional, infrequent and informal conversations with the Department, but none of those reflected anything about the active travel delivery plan and they certainly were not in a formal stakeholder forum setting.

Mr McHugh: Did you not have any informal communication with the Department?

Mr McClean: During the consultation on the legislation on taxis in bus lanes, we reached out to the Department to have a conversation about our thoughts on it. Cycling UK and the Walk Wheel Cycle Trust have reached out to the Department to ask to talk about a few minor active travel schemes, but, as I said, there has been nothing formal, and there was no stakeholder forum.

Mr McHugh: Duncan, in your presentation, you used the words "fairness" and "equity". The view seems to be that people are hung up on that when it comes to the dispersal of funding to develop active travel programmes. I represent a very rural community in west Tyrone, and I live in Castlederg, which is one of the most rural towns in the North of Ireland, and I think that it is not just about fairness and equality but safety. I am talking about safety for our young people travelling to and from school. Many of them now cycle to school because of programmes in schools.

It concerns me when I hear your views because I wonder whether we are, once again, going to be condemned to provide for the greater number of people? Public services are located in areas far removed from rural communities, and the excuse is that they are making provision for the greater number of people.

How does your presentation sit with that, Duncan?

Mr Dollimore: I have lived in rural communities most of my life, so I am acutely aware of the sense of frustration, because there are particular rural safety issues. My comments were specifically about where the Department chooses to spend its active travel budget in order to have the most impact. Some of the issues that you talk about can be addressed by looking at safety issues in rural communities, perhaps through a different lens.

I have been a little bit critical of some of the things that DFI has done on active travel, but it is doing something extremely bold at the minute by consulting on speed limits, including those on rural roads. Massive steps could be taken there to improve rural safety that complement the active travel budget, despite being slightly tangential to it. I am therefore not for a moment saying that steps should not be taken to address those issues. My point is about what should be done with the active travel budget. Things have to be looked at in the round in order to determine what resource should be put into particular areas. I do not saying, "Let's not doing anything there". Different things can be done to address some of the safety concerns that you raised, particularly those in rural areas.

Mr McHugh: I agree entirely with the concept of there being equity and fairness, but I firmly believe that equity and fairness are trumped by safety. I think again of young people in particular who are travelling in and out of rural towns to make use of their facilities. It is appropriate that rural roads be developed to encourage them to walk or cycle. There are some good examples in the Derry City and Strabane District Council area, in particular what the council and Donegal County Council are doing to provide cross-border greenways. You said that if greenways are used by an awful lot of people, that is a different ball game. I can see potential linkages between towns and villages in my area. I will focus on Strabane. The new development that is happening there on the Donegal side of the border is giving people greater access to travel to and from work and so on by bicycle or whatever. Is there therefore not greater need, especially in border communities, for that type of cooperation so that we can learn from each other? The speed limits that you mentioned have already been introduced in the Republic. It will be a very interesting development when the North gets to that stage.

Mr McClean: I agree with you, Maolíosa. The Strabane greenway proposals are really good. One of the intentions for that greenway network is to connect some of the smaller towns, and creating a greenway makes a lot more sense. It is a much more justifiable use of money and land than, say, having a segregated cycle lane on a road.

Mr McHugh: Thank you.

Mr McNulty: Thank you, Duncan and Andrew, for your evidence. I am sure that you feel as though you are banging your head against a brick wall. Is that a fair assessment?

Mr Dollimore: I would not put it that way. I do not want to find myself in a situation in three, four or five years in which I, or somebody else from Cycling UK, have the privilege of being invited back to this Committee only to have the same conversation. I would want us to be sitting here saying, "DFI has done a fantastic job, and we have moved towards delivering against the active travel goals". My saying that would require us to be in a situation in which we can have meaningful engagement, so I do not want to burn any bridges at this particular point. I do, however, want some meaningful engagement to start.

Mr McNulty: Do you feel that it is now time for a paradigm shift in how people consider or perceive active travel? Sedentary lifestyles are going to place a huge burden on our whole economy. Encouraging and participating in active travel will therefore be hugely economically beneficial.

Mr Dollimore: I could speak for ages about the benefits of active travel in economic and well-being terms, but, focusing on your position on health, I will say that it always surprises me how little any of the Governments across the UK spend on illness prevention. We fix the problem after it is there. Promoting active, healthy lifestyles in order to avoid people becoming ill is just about the best spend that you can make out of any public health-related budget, so, yes, getting more people walking and cycling to school and when making short journeys would pay massive long-term dividends for the health budget as well.

Mr McClean: We had Professor Ian Walker over with us. He is a behavioural psychologist. In fact, he spoke at an event in Stormont. He said to me, "I often say to people, 'Tell me what your problem is, and I will tell you how active travel is part of the solution'". Whether it is childhood independence, health, congestion or air quality, active travel has to start playing a fundamental role in our transport system.

I have two young kids, a house that is falling down and a busy job. I do not have the time to exercise, but my baseline health is pretty good, and the reason for that is that I have built activity into my everyday life. I am lucky enough to be able to walk my kids to school and then cycle to work. Doing that keeps my health at a certain level. We all know that there is a tipping point with health, but when activity is able to be built into everyday tasks, it is almost like free exercise. Activity is therefore key.

Mr McNulty: Where do we feature in a ranking table of European countries? Where does this little North sit when it comes to active travel participation and spend?

Mr Dollimore: Based on the sums spent on infrastructure schemes, you are at the bottom. The way in which the figures are now being presented means that you have shot up the table, but we do not think that those figures are an accurate reflection of spending on infrastructure. Northern Ireland is not doing particularly well either when it comes to levels of cycling participation. To be fair, there are a huge number of places — places in England, for example — that are also not doing well. In other nations, we are not seeing the increases across the board that we would like to see.

We are, however, seeing big increases in certain places where investment has been made, and that comes back to prioritisation. Where do you start? You cannot do it all at once, everywhere and at the same time. I will put it another way. Northern Ireland is the country for which I struggle to find an exemplar of really good infrastructure resulting in an increase in active travel. I could, however, show you exemplars across the UK and in Ireland.

Mr McNulty: I could show you places in the North where that is plainly the case, such as the new greenway between Newry and Carlingford, in which the Minister, to give her credit, was involved. That greenway is a game changer. We need to see a linkage between that greenway and the Newry to Portadown greenway along the canal. There has been exceptional uptake of the new greenway. I would love to hear your perspective on creating a link between those two greenways through Newry city.

You implied that there is a bit of cooking of the books going on, but I will not ask you to comment on that.

Have you thought about creating a map of pathways and old rural rights of way to be included in an active travel network?

Mr Dollimore: We have not thought about creating a map. That is not to say that it is not a good idea. Map creation is not something that naturally sits with us, but we would certainly support the development of a network map. Occasionally, there are routes that people do not know exist, so having a map could help them plan a route and thus get more involved in active travel.

Mr McClean: You make a really good point about connecting the two greenways through Newry. Here is a good analogy: if someone were to build a rail line to the airport, it would not just be about the airport. Building that rail line would enable rail travel all the way along the route between the city and the airport. Connecting two separate greenways through a town does several different things.

It creates a safe route in a town and connects two routes that go to other towns. That is a good example of what has to be part of a prioritisation framework. Prioritisation is based not just on population but on the existing infrastructure and on the potential to get more people to cycle whenever investment is made.

Mr Harvey: I have listened to your concerns. You said that spending without consultation having been undertaken is undermining active travel and leading to existing money being spent badly. It all comes down to money needing to be prioritised better to areas of need and to the places where it will prove most useful. Will you comment on that, please?

Mr Dollimore: There are a couple of different points in there. On your point about active travel being undermined, saying that the Department is now spending £50 million rather than a much lower figure has only one advantage, which is to allow DFI to say, "We're making progress towards meeting the 10% target". Saying that undermines the case for active travel, however, because people then think that all this money is being spent but that they are not seeing delivery and not seeing more people cycling. It is therefore a short-term fix for a problem to which there is a commitment, and there is a perception that we need to deliver on that commitment. The focus, however, should be on the outcome, which is to get more people cycling, and on what we need to do to achieve it. It appears as though the question is being asked the wrong way round.

Where money is spent on particular schemes to get more people cycling, we know that the best value will be achieved on certain routes. That makes the case for investment in more routes. If DFI is able to say, as Manchester is, "We built this 6-kilometre route, and its impact has been that we now have 65% more people cycling on it", that makes the case for the next route. Creating a route to nowhere, because, for example, DFI already owns the verge or nobody is particularly going to object to it, can seem like the easy thing to do. DFI might say, "We have now ticked off another kilometre of cycle route" or, "We have now spent x more money", but, in that conversation, the outcome is being missed.

Years ago, there were major issues with councils in England, because there was an artificial drive to say that they had delivered x miles of cycle lanes. We had councils saying, "We have delivered 20 miles of cycle lanes", but what they had done was paint a white line on a road for 20 miles. That was a case of ticking a box to comply with the target rather than thinking about the outcome. We therefore need to get back to thinking about having a hard, laser-like focus on the outcome when investment decisions are being made.

Mr Harvey: I am totally with you. It is all about outcomes-based accountability. The outcome should be the number of people using the path, not the number of miles created. There is nothing worse than driving around potholes through the countryside and seeing a beautiful cycle path and walkway, which I am all for, with nobody on it. That is not a good outcome.

Mr McMurray: Potholes: unsafe for cars and unsafe for bikes. Discuss. I am the wrong person to ask about risk and safety.

Mr McClean: You are fundamentally right. Potholes are much more dangerous for people who cycle on roads than they are for drivers. In Northern Ireland, we are trying to get new people to cycle when they are making everyday journeys. That will start with kids and people who are commuting to work. There is probably not going to be a massive shift to having Lycra-clad, £2,000-bike owners cycling all the way from Downpatrick to Belfast. I do not know whether you do that.

Mr McMurray: Not recently.

Mr McClean: That is why our focus is on, and DFI's focus should be on, creating protected, segregated cycle lanes. The question that people have to ask themselves is this: would I let my five-year-old use this route? Almost every time, their answer would be no. That is why we are pushing for them.

Mr McMurray: I echo Mr McHugh's point about rural communities. Having listened to what was said, I can only presume that, since the biggest concentration of the population is in Belfast, that is where you will put cycles lanes. I have cycled through Belfast, and, to put it politely, it is a challenge. Realistically, it is a battle. You get abuse hurled at you.

You touched on traffic-calming measures — I get that — but how do you view the bicycle strategy? People in South Down, as well as the people in Strabane and Castlederg in the west whom Mr McHugh was talking about, want to see safe routes for their five-year-olds. Is the strategy going to put everything into having a big-ticket 15-kilometre route? Are big and small schemes to be run concurrently? Is it a case of creating the big-ticket route and then moving on to creating smaller routes and routes in places that are more out of the way?

Mr Dollimore: The first point to make is that they do not have to be in Belfast.

Mr McMurray: I appreciate that. I am hypothesising.

Mr Dollimore: DFI could choose to focus initially on a number of larger settlements. My point was that doing Belfast and the recommended 42 settlements all at the same time is not going to work, given the money that DFI has. Some decision therefore needs to be made about prioritisation. The Department could phase schemes and say, "This is what we want to do in phase 1, and this may be what we want to do in phase 2". People in towns and other places would therefore know that they were not being completely forgotten about. The Department could then think about what else it might do without creating substantial, more costly infrastructure in some of those places. For instance, could the town centre speed limit be reduced to 20 mph? Could through traffic on a particular road in the town centre be prevented? Could a particular part of the town centre be pedestrianised? There are things that DFI could do that are cheaper that would also result in a local benefit. Those are all things to be considered. Our concern is that the draft delivery plan was about having bits of cycle lanes everywhere, which feels problematic to us.

Mr McMurray: You made a point about looking at the Manchester Bee Network, which was started in 2019, to compare with our position. It is depressing. We can see what Scotland has done well in towns. From big cities to small towns, other places seem to have embraced the bike.

Mr Dollimore: Greater Manchester is Manchester city, 10 boroughs and towns such as Bolton, Wigan and Bury. The Bee Network covers the entirety of the greater Manchester area, not just the city centre.

Mr McMurray: It is comparable, however.

Mr McClean: I will try to finish on a positive. Issues in a lot of Audit Office reports, and even recent road maintenance issues, seem insurmountable. That can change quite quickly, however. Indeed, it can change within an electoral cycle. We do not need to wait decades, but the Department has to prioritise what it does, be accountable for what it does and engage with stakeholders. If it does those three things, we should see differences in four or five years — in the next mandate — and see more people walking and cycling. It is therefore a challenge that can be addressed.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): That is a positive note on which to finish. Well done, Andrew. There are no more questions from members. It has been a mammoth session. Thank you very much, Duncan and Andrew, for your time. The session has been really useful. Clerk, are there any actions to be noted?

The Committee Clerk: Members did not propose anything during the session, and no additional information was offered.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): Guys, thank you for your time.

Mr Dollimore: Thank you very much, Chair.