Purpose

Active Travel England (ATE) have continued to
support Combined and Local transport authorities with revenue
funding allocations for 2024 under a new one-year Capability and
Ambition Fund.
The Capability and Ambition Fund builds on the Local Authority
Capability Fund, which provided funding to most authorities in
England in 2021/22, 22/23 and 23/24. It supports the commitment
made in the Gear Change plan in July 2020, to increase the
capabilities of local authorities to plan good active travel
infrastructure, including building more expertise and
undertaking more evidence-based planning, alongside delivering
behaviour change initiatives.
ATE requires that the funding is used to achieve the following fund
objectives:
• To support capability building activities that will enable
authorities to undertake ambitious and inclusive active travel
programmes. In particular, building technical capability to plan
and deliver high quality walking, wheeling and cycling
infrastructure networks, effectively engaging local communities and
collecting evidence of impact to inform optimisation of future
programmes.
• To deliver behaviour change initiatives that result in
sustained increases in walking, wheeling and cycling for everyday
journeys including to school and work. In particular, supporting
the objectives set out in the second Cycling and Walking Strategy
(CWIS2): to increase the percentage of short journeys in towns and
cities that are walked or cycled, to increase walking and cycling
and to increase the percentage of 5-10 year olds who usually walk
to school, with specific focus on increasing participation from
under-represented groups.
The West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA) are the funding
provider and Bradford Council are the Recipient for Capability
Funding within the Bradford district.
The matter to be considered is the consent to sign agreements to
the grant, deed of variations for the Capability Fund and to
authorise the development and delivery of projects within the
Capability Fund in line with funding allocations as detailed in
Table 1 and in line with Active Travel England requirements.

Content

i) Approval to proceed with the development
and delivery of projects within the Capability Fund
ii) For each project within the Capability Fund, approval to sign
the agreement of the grant by the funder (West Yorkshire Combined
Authority) and associated deed of variations.