Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140-159)
12 JUNE 2003
MR MIKE
ASH, MS
DANILA ARMSTRONG,
MS IMOGEN
SHARP, MS
PATRICIA HAYES,
MR ALEC
MCGIVAN
AND MS
MELA WATTS
Q140 Dr Naysmith: Ms Hayes, do you
want to add something to that?
Ms Hayes: Yes. I am very enthusiastic
about this. The use of the planning system to deliver walking
and cycling is a big growth area in the Department of Transport
as well as for ODPM who we work very closely alongside on all
these issues. The Department of Transport funds 111 bursary holders,
as we call them, who sit in local authorities and provide schools
and local authorities and developers with advice on how to put
together travel plans which can reduce the need to travel around
sites. That can mean schools or it can mean mixed use developments.
Last year we published a huge volume of research and a guide on
how to make best use of the planning system and that set a number
of frameworks for travel plans that local authorities could negotiate
with employers and schools on to reduce the need to use private
cars to get to and from their sites. It is a big growth area.
Mr Ash: Our general policies in
respect of making more effective use of existing developed land—more
concentrated forms of development, more development in town centres
rather than out of town, higher density developments, are relevant
to this both in terms of safeguarding existing spaces that are
valuable to the community and in terms of creating more accessible
forms of development because they are more concentrated.
John Austin: I note in the evidence that
one of the responsibilities of the Deputy Prime Minister is allotments.
Q141 Chairman: Does that surprise
Mr Ash?
Mr Ash: I was aware of it.
Q142 John Austin: A lot of allotments
are in areas that are under statutory protection. My colleague
Dr Naysmith talked about the planning process and you mentioned
the Thames Gateway which is part of my area. I have not actually
seen the creation of many allotments or leisure gardens in the
new developments that are coming along. I do not know if it is
all down to Charlie Dimmock but, given the interest that there
is now in gardening, should we not be providing opportunities
for those in the new development areas who are not living in houses
with gardens to have access to allotments?
Mr Ash: Allotments are certainly
mentioned in the guidance that I talked about as being something
that local authorities should (a) protect and (b) encourage the
development of.
Q143 John Austin: Are you aware that
there is provision in the new developments because I have certainly
not seen them?
Mr Ash: No, I cannot answer that
question directly. I am not aware of that because indeed some
of the developments are still being formulated, of course. There
is action going on though to improve the data on the allotments
that exist at the moment and there is consideration being given
to how to consolidate the legislation which relates to the improvement
of management and protection of allotments. What you are talking
about is getting some positive policies into plans where new developments
are proposed to provide allotments as opposed to sport and recreation
facilities in the way that they have come to be viewed. Certainly
one of the objectives set out in the guidance note I talked about,
where it talks about health and wellbeing, is about promoting
health in a variety of ways, including in that respect. It is
certainly something that we are looking at in terms of the Livability
Programme which I talked about earlier where a large amount of
money, £89 million, is going into a Livability Fund to promote
projects and I do not see why it should not include new allotment
provision in those.
Q144 Chairman: Can I ask Ms Hayes
a question on walking strategy? Where are we at with that?
Ms Hayes: We are hoping to produce
a document within the next two or three weeks.
Q145 Chairman: So it is imminent,
is it?
Ms Hayes: A document is imminent,
yes.
Q146 Chairman: A document is imminent.
What is the difference between a document and a strategy?
Ms Hayes: I am being a bit cagey
here because the document that we plan to produce will have consultative
elements in it, so it will not be a final definitive strategy
document.
Q147 Chairman: I understand; so it
is consultative, is it?
Ms Hayes: Yes, but it will have
some proposals in it as well. It is not an empty consultation.
Q148 Chairman: But it will be within
the period of our inquiry?
Ms Hayes: Yes.
Q149 Chairman: Is it fair to say
that you are aware of some of the difficulties, looking at my
own constituency, for instance, where pedestrians effectively
cannot get across roads? That is an issue you are looking at,
is it?
Ms Hayes: One of the things that
we have been doing over the last year in preparing the document
is going round the country and talking to walking practitioners
at local level.
Q150 Chairman: What is a walking
practitioner? It sounds a bit Monty Python for those of us who
remember Monty Python.
Ms Hayes: That is the problem,
talking about walking. The people in local authorities who have
technical responsibility for delivering good walking facilities—
Q151 Chairman: You mean they get
out of their cars now and again?
Ms Hayes: Yes. We thought that
because the key delivery agent for better walking is local government
rather than central government it was important for the strategy
to be produced in a bottom-up way rather than top-down, so when
the document comes out you will see a lot of material in it about
fairly technical stuff to do with how you design crossings, the
need for guidance from central government about how to balance
the needs of pedestrians and drivers and just those practical,
getting across the road sorts of issues that people are concerned
about.
Q152 Dr Taylor: Will the walking
strategy have anything to help parents who would like to walk
their kids to school but they do not have time because it takes
longer and they do not regard it as safe for the kids to walk
themselves? Is there any idea of using lollipop ladies much more
extensively and getting them at, say, pick-up points, to be escorts
for groups of kids? Are there any innovative ways of getting kids
walking to school?
Ms Hayes: There are lots of innovative
ways of getting kids to walk to school more. If all local authorities
performed on this at a level that the best authorities perform
at there would be a very different national picture on walking
to school from what we see at the moment. The Department of Transport
funds Walk to School Week and over half of our children in England
participate in some kind of Walk to School Week event which shows
how much enthusiasm there is at the school level for doing more
walking to school. I do not think the strategy can give more time
to parents; I do not think that is terribly realistic.
Q153 Dr Taylor: Have we been given
evidence of some of those good local authority initiatives?
Ms Hayes: We can certainly let
you have information on things like walking buses.
Mr Ash: There are also initiatives
under the Neighbourhood Wardens programme in this respect. I have
one in front of me for Neighbourhood Wardens in North Tyneside
which both escorts elderly people when they collect their pensions
but also promotes outdoor activities for young people at school,
walking, etc, so we have seen some activities under that banner
too.
Q154 Dr Taylor: Can I pick up something
on cycle tracks as well because there seems to be a way of just
drawing lines on main roads which seems to solve the question
as far as the local authority goes but does not help anybody?
What is the Department's view on cycle tracks?
Ms Hayes: I share your view that
we have got a problem at the moment that the information we are
getting on local authorities tells us about how many miles of
cycle tracks they are putting down but does not give us a terribly
good idea of whether they are really meeting people's needs or
what the quality of the design is. One of the ways that we are
trying to improve our grip on that is working with the National
Cycling Strategy Board which is in the process of putting a team
of 18 auditors out to each local authority. The job of those auditors
will be to look at what the local authorities are saying in their
plans they are doing for cyclists, how many extra bike racks they
are putting in, how many miles of cycle route, and to provide
a quality assessment of whether what is being delivered makes
any sense or not. We are expecting the outcome of that research
to give us a much better picture on the quality of provision for
cyclists rather than just its weight and we expect the Board to
want to publish that later in the year.
Dr Taylor: This is a question to all
our witnesses. There are lots of initiatives to try and get older
people involved in computers and things like that. What initiatives
are there to get older people to be more active?
Chairman: Withdrawing bus services!
Dr Taylor: We have already heard about
allotments which are terribly useful for older people. Are there
any initiatives to get them helping in public gardens or helping
in public graveyards?
Chairman: Have you thought this through?
Q155 Dr Taylor: With the maintenance,
I mean, because things like this are crying out to be maintained.
Ms Sharp: Can I come in with a
couple of points on that? From the Department of Health's point
of view I would say there are three different strands around that.
One is that through the New Opportunities Fund there are a number
of Healthy Living Centres funded, now over 200, many of which
will be working with communities on that sort of thing, gardening
and allotments and particularly targeting older people, and through
the Local Exercise Action Pilot that we have recently established
where there are PCT-led initiatives in each region. One of our
focus groups was older people. This may seem tangential but we
also have a couple of falls collaboratives. Those are working
with primary care trusts and also wider communities to prevent
falls in older people. The connection there is that the way to
prevent falls is largely through increasing mobility and exercise,
so there are a number of initiatives from the Department of Health
on that.
Mr McGivan: My colleague has mentioned
the LEA projects and Healthy Living Centres. In the Game Plan
report there was an interesting study done of how in certain parts
of the world, and the countries picked out were Scandinavian countries,
physical activity amongst older people rises from about the age
of 50 onwards and they have been remarkably successful in this,
whereas of course in this country it is the opposite. The Game
Plan does not quite reveal the secret of how the Finns have managed
to do this but certainly it is something we should be looking
at because it should not be taken as read that people of 50 or
60-plus simply become less active and there are examples of countries
where the trend has gone the opposite way and apparently that
has had considerable impact on heart attack rates in those countries
and so on. We need to look quite carefully at all of that.
Dr Taylor: Are there any moves to make
older people take to their bicycles again?
Chairman: He is our health fascist!
John Austin: On your bike!
Q156 Dr Taylor: I have just got to
open a new cycle path along a canal towpath and I am slightly
worried about the older people wobbling along it.
Ms Hayes: The answer is that I
do not know of any specific initiatives that we have targeted
at older people. The Cycling Strategy Board has just put out a
publication on cycling in health which has a very nice picture
on the front of a lady of a certain age wearing a helmet, so I
think that is the closest we have come so far.
Chairman: So you recommend that older
people should dig their own graves, do you? You know where the
idea has come from.
Q157 Sandra Gidley: Can I follow
up with a couple of transport questions to Ms Hayes? The Sustrans
network has generated a great deal of publicity. How much of it
has actually happened because I am aware that the bit round me
has not?
Ms Hayes: I will need to check
the exact figures but I think Sustrans set itself a target of
having 10,000 miles of network in place by 2010. I think the latest
information is that they are on track to deliver that.
Q158 Sandra Gidley: There were some
on track by 2002 but I cannot remember the exact year. There were
earlier aspirations.
Ms Hayes: Yes. I think the network
is on track to be delivered on schedule but I will check that.
Q159 Sandra Gidley: I take it the
Department of Transport is keen to promote cycling?
Ms Hayes: We are, yes.
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