London faces a shortfall of £300 million for healthy streets plans, revealed Caroline Russell AM today.
At today’s Mayor’s Question Time, Caroline questioned the Mayor about his £80 million Streetspace plan, designed to build better walking and cycling schemes in London and help people maintain safe social distancing. [1]
However, Caroline received confirmation from TfL’s Chief Finance Officer Simon Killonback on Monday that all but a few of the Mayor’s Healthy Streets programmes have paused – they were meant to be £417 million for this year. [2]
The cuts filter down to the boroughs too, they were expecting £131 million in Healthy Streets funding, but have been forced to stop all works and report on costs. They will now make do with sharing £60 million from Streetspace, a loss of almost £70 million across London.
TfL faces the biggest challenge in its history as fare income dropped by 90 per cent during lockdown. Its new emergency budget has conditions imposed by the Government which mean less money all round, but Government are still pushing ahead with multi-billion pound new road schemes, like the Thames Lower Crossing. [3]
Caroline Russell says:
I have been a walking and cycling campaigner in London since my now adult children were toddlers – I have never known such an urgent need for safe space for walking and cycling than what we are facing in the current crisis.
We cannot short-change Londoners. These new plans are just a sticking plaster to cover the looming cuts underneath. Boroughs are missing out twice, once on the original money they were promised, and now with short-term schemes, not the long-term permanent ones we really need.
The Mayor must stand up for the boroughs and for Londoners. So many of us are desperately trying to stick to advice to keep our communities safe. So many of us have recently taken to bikes, often for the first time, as we try to avoid public transport. So many of us are walking local journeys to shops where we might have taken buses or cars.
We are doing our bit. We need the safest streets possible to keep doing it, and we won’t get them if the original, hard-fought for healthy streets plans are allowed to wither away.
While most of the Healthy Streets plans have paused, changes to Old Street that had already been started are still going ahead, while existing Cycleways are being rolled out as temporary works instead of permanent.
TfL’s emergency budget is due to last six months, serious funding discussions for the future are yet to get underway. TfL’s board will consider a new budget in July which will cancel and delay much of the existing investment programme.
This week Caroline also wrote to Heidi Alexander, the Deputy Mayor for Transport, to ask that the proposed Cremorne footbridge between Battersea and Fulham be part of the representations Heidi makes to the Government today.
The bridge has been agreed in principle since 2014 and is supported by the boroughs on both sides of the river. [4]
Notes to editors
[1] Mayor’s bold new Streetspace plan will overhaul London’s streets, Mayor of London, May 2020 https://www.london.gov.uk/press-releases/mayoral/mayors-bold-plan-will-…
[2] London Assembly Transport Committee meeting, 15 June 2020 (video) https://www.london.gov.uk/transport-committee-2020-06-15
[3] Thames Lower Crossing scheme, consulted on during lockdown https://highwaysengland.co.uk/lower-thames-crossing-home/
[4] Letter from Caroline Russell to the Deputy Mayor for Transport, Cremorne bridge – a shovel-ready project, river crossings for walking and cycling, access to toilets, Jun 2020 https://www.london.gov.uk/about-us/london-assembly/assembly-members/pub…
The planned £417m budget for Healthy Streets in 2020/21 was disclosed in the 17 July 2019 meeting of TfL’s Programmes and Investment Committee http://content.tfl.gov.uk/pic-20190717-public-pack.pdf, which splits it down by area of spending on page 167-8.
At the Transport Committee on 15 June 2020 Gareth Powell and Simon Killonback of TfL confirmed that existing spending in Healthy Streets was paused, including borough works with only a handful of exceptions, as detailed in TfL’s Board meeting presentation on the emergency budget (Page 51 of the TfL Board supplementary agenda for the 02 June 2020 meeting http://content.tfl.gov.uk/board-20200602-agenda-and-papers-supplentary…). The funding that is now active is £80m in Streetspace funding, of which £55m has come from the extraordinary funding agreement for Transport for London, and £25m is from DfT funding for cycling and walking in England with £5m of that distributed already, and £20m to follow.
As of the end of last week TfL had already allocated over £14m of that £60m.