The Government is committed to ensuring that everyone, across the country, should have access to and benefit from quality sport and physical activity opportunities, including cycling.

We provide the majority of support for grassroots sport through our arm’s length body, Sport England. The constituency of Newcastle-under-Lyme has received a total of £59,241 of Sport England funding in 2025/2026. Staffordshire has received over £1.1 million of Sport England funding in 2025/2026.

Sport England has provided over £33 million of funding to the National Governing Body for cycling, British Cycling, for the period 2022-2029 to invest in grassroots cycling initiatives.

With less than one year remaining until the Grand Départs arrive in Great Britain for the first time, there is a significant opportunity to inspire participation in cycling. That is why as a Government we’re investing £32 million to not just deliver these iconic races, but also to support the new JOY social impact programme to ensure a lasting legacy from the event.

There are no plans to make it compulsory for cyclists to wear high visibility clothing or a protective helmet when cycling. However, cyclists should ensure that they can be clearly seen by other road users, both for their own safety and for that of others.

The Government strongly encourages cyclists to wear helmets, and this is reflected in The Highway Code. A previous assessment concluded that the safety benefits of mandating helmets would be likely to be outweighed by the fact that it would put some people off cycling, thereby reducing the wider health and environmental benefits.

As set out in the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions, drivers and cyclists must give way to any pedestrians already on a zebra crossing. This includes crossings across cycle tracks at floating bus stops. Failure to give way is an offence enforceable by the police.

The Government has allocated £5.4m of capital and revenue funding for Staffordshire over the next 4 years to promote walking and cycling. This funding allows the County Council to build high-quality infrastructure and fund behaviour change activities such as cycle training.

This is part of the £320 million Integrated Transport Fund that was provided to Staffordshire County Council through a flexible pot that can be used in line with local priorities including walking and cycling. Previous rounds of capital funding have been used to construct pedestrian and cycle improvements on Barracks Road, Hassell Street and Pool Dam in Newcastle-under-Lyme.

The hon. Lady probably knows that the active travel commissioner, Chris Boardman, is a huge fan of side road zebra crossings and the potential they have. That is why we have said in the cycling and walking investment strategy that we intend to legislate for them in future.

In Manchester, London and now Wales, side road zebra crossings without Belisha beacons are allowed, yet in the rest of England they are not currently available. The Secretary of State mentioned the new cycling and walking strategy. Dunyeats Road in my constituency is suffering from multiple issues that are causing people and traffic to collide. Will she consider allowing councils to bring forward those crossings?

The collection of data on prosecutions is a matter for the Ministry of Justice, and they hold information up to December 2025. Therefore, no information is available for the last six months.

The Government recognises the importance of improving safety for people walking and cycling. On 12 June the Government published the third Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy (CWIS3) which outlines the Government's vision for walking, wheeling and cycling to be safe, easy and accessible choices for everyone. Over £4.5 billion is projected to be invested in active travel up to 2030 from a wide range of funding streams including £1.1 billion of funding for Active Travel England.

The Government has also set ambitious national road safety targets to reduce the number of people killed or seriously injured on Great Britain’s roads by 65% by 2035, and to reduce the number of children killed or seriously injured by 70% by 2035, both against a 2022 to 2024 baseline. These targets sit alongside the active travel safety performance indicator to monitor the rate of cyclists and pedestrians killed or seriously injured on England’s roads, measured as the number of fatalities and serious injuries per billion miles walked and cycled. The Department will actively monitor this indicator, which should help to assess whether active travel is becoming safer as more people walk and cycle.

We have learnt from the previous Cycling and Walking Investment Strategies of the importance of providing long term funding certainty for local authorities and third sector delivery partners to deliver our ambitious targets by 2035.

Estimates of the proportion of children who usually walk or cycle to school in England are obtained from the National Travel Survey. In 2024, 43% of children aged between five and 16 usually walked to school, and 3% usually cycled to school.

Further statistics on travel to school are available in table NTS0615, which can be accessed on the gov.uk website.

On 12 June, the Government published the third Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy, which outlines the Government’s vision for walking, wheeling and cycling to be safe, easy and accessible choices for everyone in England. Also published on 12 June, Active Travel England’s delivery plan, Worth Every Step, sets out how they will work with partners to turn that strategy into action.

Between 2025 and 2030, Active Travel England is administering more than £760 million of devolved funding for walking, wheeling and cycling schemes across England, which will improve the safety of pedestrians and cyclists.

Fixed Penalty Notices (FPNs) are matters for the Home Office. They do not however hold information on the number of FPNs issued for cycling on the footway.

Active Travel England works collaboratively with local authorities, building their capability to enable more people to walk, wheel and cycle. Milton Keynes Council and Buckinghamshire Council each received a level 2 rating in Active Travel England’s 2025 Local Authority Active Travel Capability Ratings. Published in December 2025, the report accompanying the ratings describes level 2 as ‘Strong local leadership and organisational capability, with clear plans that form the basis of an emerging network with a few elements already in place.’

As part of the government’s £626 million investment in active travel over 2026/27 to 2029/30, Buckinghamshire were allocated £9,119,124 and Milton Keynes allocated £4,733,197.

The collection of data on prosecutions is a matter for the Ministry of Justice.

Data on prosecutions for cycling offences by offence code are available online at: Criminal Justice Statistics Quarterly: December 2025 - GOV.UK

The monitoring and evaluation of active travel schemes is the responsibility of local authorities. The Department for Transport publishes evaluation guidance, and is supported by Active Travel England’s (ATE) Monitoring and Evaluation guidance for the Active Travel Fund. The department recently published our Evaluation Programme that outlines the active travel evaluations currently in development. These evaluations will include an assessment of active travel scheme usage based on information provided by local authorities.

The Department for Transport publishes guidance to support local authorities to conduct appraisal, supported by bespoke advice provided directly to Authorities. This includes methods to estimate walking and cycling demand to account for relevant local factors. Active Travel England publishes monitoring and evaluation guidance for active travel that recommends methodologies to estimate baseline cycling demand and evaluating scheme performance by comparing the data collected with the estimated number of walking, wheeling and cycling trips per day without the proposed scheme using the Active Modes Appraisal Toolkit (AMAT).

There is no requirement for authorities to publish post-implementation data. The Department for Transport publishes guidance on how to monitor and evaluate transport investments, however it is for the funding authority to determine a proportionate approach to monitoring and evaluating their investments and for publishing the results. Active Travel England has published detailed guidance on what data authorities should collect for any active travel capital schemes funded by them.