Agenda item

East Sussex County Council Consultation: Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan

Minutes:

East Sussex County Council’s (ESCC) Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan (LCWIP) set out proposed cycling and walking networks and measures within specific areas of the county.  It focused on areas of the county where there was potential to increase levels of cycling and walking, with an emphasis on delivering infrastructure improvements.  An established plan enabled ESCC to apply for and secure investment from a range of funding sources.

 

A public consultation period had been launched on 30 October 2020 and was scheduled to close on 11 December 2020.  The Council and members of the public would have the opportunity to comment on the proposed cycling and walking networks and share their ideas for future progression.

 

Consideration was given to how the Council could support ESCC’s LCWIP and whether the document be adopted as part of Rother’s Environment Strategy.  The Environment and Policy Manager highlighted the following issues:

 

·         Time-consuming large-scale project for the whole of the county (originated in 2017).

·         28 documents / appendices consultation (geographical scale).

·         Aims and objectives were unclear.

·         Further clarity was required on the role of the Local Access Forum.

·         Government requested that the LCWIP focused on main areas to get people walking and cycling.  It was expected that this would be translated to a fine-grained analysis to identify what these main areas were e.g. by segmenting into school, commuter, public transport, shopping and leisure journeys.  This segmentation appears to be missing.

·         Missing criteria in Appendix 6 of the documentation e.g. length of the journey (affect infrastructure development), measure analysis of journeys and lack of segmentation / differentiation of users.

·         LCWIP prioritised the coastal strip and larger market towns in the county which were already served by public transport; rural areas limited to car usage.  From an environmental perspective, the LCWIP was not supporting the rural areas of Rother that often had very limited or non-existent public transport network and therefore left no alternative but to drive a car.

·         School journeys – Government target of 55% by 2025 of 5-10 age groups walking to school.  Only six references (mainly Battle – information supplied by 1066 Cycling Club) of school journeys within the LCWIP compared to 50 in Adur and Worthing LCWIP.  Cycle / walking routes had been identified on a Bexhill map only, not across the whole district.

 

During the discussion, the following salient points were noted:

 

·         It was confirmed that the Council’s Cycling and Walking Champion would be consulted before the Council’s response was submitted.

·         Request that priority be given to road maintenance e.g. repairing pot holes across the district.

·         Introduce cycle lanes on main routes, where permittable.

·         Mixed-use cycling / walking pathways enabled pedestrians and cyclists to make their journeys safer; rights of way were shared equally.  It was important that rights of way were respected by both parties.  Differences of opinion were expressed regarding safety issues.

 

It was agreed that the comments of the Environment and Policy Manager and the Climate Change Steering Group be included within the Council’s response to the consultation.

 

RESOLVED: That the comments of the Environment and Policy Manager and the Climate Change Steering Group be included within the Council’s response to the consultation.