Spotlight on Ambition Grant winners

A series of major cycling projects that are due to take shape over the coming year will be discussed at a round-table session at Cycle City  The session, which will be chaired by officials from the Department for Transport (DfT), will learn how the eight Cycle City Ambition Grant winners plan to spend a total of £77m. 

The eight are:

• Greater Manchester (£20m)
• West Yorkshire (£18.1m)
• Birmingham (£17m)
• West of England (£7.8m)
• Newcastle (£5.7m)
• Cambridge (£4.1m)
• Norwich (£3.7m)
• Oxford (£0.8m)

There will also be details of how the four winning National Parks – Peak District, Dartmoor, South Downs and New Forest – plan to spend a total of £17m government funding on cycling projects.

The DfT says it has been working closely with the eight cities to support them in progressing their plans through final design and consultation, including site-specific authorisations where necessary. 

A DfT spokesman says: “We appreciate that the timescales are very tight in which to deliver the more ambitious projects and understand that some scheme elements may still be in the final stages of delivery at the end of March 2015.”

Each city has detailed how they will monitor and evaluate the success of their projects. “However, in line with the government’s localism agenda, the DfT will not require the cities to submit lengthy monitoring reports. Instead, we expect the cities to undertake monitoring and evaluation of their projects; as a minimum we would expect changes in levels of cycling to be monitored, and where relevant, data collection around health and congestion outcomes should also be considered.” The department expects cities to provide a report on the delivery of outputs by September 2015, with final monitoring and evaluation results required by March 2016.