National Cycle Network charity Sustrans braced for “substantial cuts”

The charity that runs the National Cycle Network (NCN) faces ‘substantial’ staffing losses, as its budget is slashed by a third following government funding cuts, and its CEO says ‘you can’t even build a home extension without financial certainty’.

The NCN carries half a billion journeys a year, a third of the rail network, and yet unlike rail or roads it lacks multi-year government funding settlements and is run by a charity. Sustrans, the charitable custodian of the NCN, currently has 700 staff working on anything from active travel infrastructure to cycling participation in schools.

CEO Xavier Brice, calling the situation “a challenge rather than an existential threat”, says Sustrans has delivered hundreds of miles of improvements in the last year, and its new strategy will focus on further improvements. While the government pledged £100m for active travel in the recent Budget, this merely extends the funding for a single year; and it’s unclear what will go to Sustrans, if anything. Brice says the NCN, as “a major piece of infrastructure”, will need long-term public investment to bring it up to scratch.

Brice said: “Funding is going to be really tight, and in the foreseeable future, Sustrans is going to shrink. This is just the fiscal reality of where we are.

“We have governments committed to active travel in the UK but the budget last year was around £150m, and some of that was a backlog from previous years. Already this year we are looking at that being closer to £100m. That means less income to pay for people in the near term to do the work.”

Brice pointed to a “lag on the consequences of active travel funding cuts” in 2023, as money for infrastructure takes time to spend, saying cuts in England “really start to catch up with you”.

In addition, Transport Scotland is bringing cycle infrastructure delivery in-house. In the financial year 2023-24, £93m of Sustrans’ £146.4m funding came from Transport Scotland under its ‘permanent infrastructure fund’, Places for Everyone. For this programme, Sustrans managed and administered multi-million pound projects, like the £6.5m South City way in Glasgow, a 3km cycling corridor whose protected cycle lane now carries 13% of all traffic on Victoria Road.

“We’ll no longer have that grant funding role around Places for Everyone,” says rBrice. “That was a significant part of our budget.” He spoke to an “orderly handover” of this programme to Transport Scotland next year.

“Clearly we will have a significant role to play in the NCN” in Scotland, added Brice.

“The real pressure is that long-term multi-year funding… It would be hard to build a significant extension if you only had financial certainty for a year, so how can you upgrade and improve an active travel network?”

Brice says to deliver health and physical activity targets, as well as cutting carbon from transport, future budgets must include long-term funding for cycling. At this week’s Transport Select Committee, Transport Secretary Louise Haigh said she hoped such multi-year funding will be included in the spring spending review, although much will depend on the Treasury.

Brice added: “The real pressure is that long-term multi-year funding: it’s really hard to build infrastructure with a year’s certainty, and a bit of carry over. It would be hard to build a significant extension if you only had financial certainty for a year, so how can you upgrade and improve an active travel network?”

Despite this, Brice is looking to the next five years. By 2030 Sustrans wants to integrate the NCN to new homes and public transport, increasing the proportion of NCN to rail station connections from 42% to 60%. It also plans to remove the remaining barriers on the Network; in 2019 there were an estimated 16,000 barriers, at a rate of roughly three per mile on off-road sections. The new strategy will also focus on children, schools and young people, including delivering ‘safer school neighbourhoods’, akin to school streets, where roads are closed to through traffic in the mornings and afternoons to help children travel actively.

Since 2019, Sustrans staff and volunteers have completed 317 projects and improved 378 miles of the Network. That includes new traffic-free routes, resurfacing and improving access on existing routes, and removing and redesigning around 1500 barriers. However, just 64% of the Network is considered “good” or “very good”.

The charity enjoys the support of philanthropists, and donations from the public, totalling more than £4m per year. In some cases wealthy individuals have paid for the charity to deliver entire routes. In terms of meeting targets, however, Brice says: “let’s not pretend you can do everything with supporter income. In order to do the improvement work and invest in that sort of infrastructure you need public money.”

“No charity or organization can do things without funding. For the scale of change needed, in terms of what would a truly world class network look like, I think the state could and should fund that. [Sustrans] can bring in communities and funds and other things needed to make it happen. At the moment we are the custodians, and we take that very seriously and we have a plan”.

“The National Cycle Network is an important piece of active travel infrastructure that provides healthier and greener travel options to millions”

Sustrans, like most charities, has gone through peaks and troughs. Says Brice: “In reality in the near term we are facing constrained funding but also we are going to be reacting to those new priorities.

“This isn’t an existential threat, it’s a challenge. We have got a new strategy that plays to our strengths and our heritage as custodians of the NCN, and the challenges of the next five years.”

An Active Travel England spokesperson said: “The National Cycle Network is an important piece of active travel infrastructure that provides healthier and greener travel options to millions of people across the country. That’s why the Government has provided more than £80m in funding to Sustrans to maintain and upgrade the network since 2018.

“The Government is currently finalising active travel funding allocations for the 2025/26 financial year and will announce further details in due course.”

Infrastructure has, time and again, been identified as key for cycle levels in the UK and elsewhere. CIN’s own Market Data, which polls bike retailers and workshops in Great Britain, has revealed that the trade is keenly in favour of more safe infrastructure, including residential connections.