Love to ride your bicycle: Wirral's Olympic cycling gold medallist Chris Boardman to lead Government's new active travel body

Cyclist and Wirral sporting hero, Chris Boardman, is to become national commissioner of the Government's new cycling and walking body, Active Travel England, which launches today.

Active Travel England will be responsible for driving up the standards of cycling and walking infrastructure and managing the national active travel budget, awarding funding for projects that improve both health and air quality.

ATE will also begin to inspect, and publish reports on, highway authorities for their performance on active travel and identify particularly dangerous failings in their highways for cyclists and pedestrians.

As well as approving and inspecting schemes, ATE will help local authorities, training staff and spreading good practice in design, implementation and public engagement. It will be a statutory consultee on major planning applications to ensure that the largest new developments properly cater for pedestrians and cyclists.

Boardman will be closely involved in the full stand-up of ATE, including the recruitment of the chief executive and management team. He has been appointed on an interim basis, while the Department conducts a full and open competition for the permanent commissioner role.

Chris is the country's leading figurehead for active travel and delivered the first phase of Manchester's public transport system known as the 'Bee Network'. He will now lead the Active Travel England team in its work to raise the standards of cycling and walking infrastructure, in line with the principles set out in Gear Change: a bold new vision for walking and cycling.

The new body will be headquartered in York from Summer 2022 and preliminary work is already underway, scrutinising councils' plans for active travel and supporting them to create ambitious schemes that will enable more people to walk, wheel and cycle safely.

Chris said: ""The positive effects of high levels of cycling and walking are clearly visible in pockets around the country where people have been given easy and safe alternatives to driving. Perhaps most important of all, though, it makes for better places to live while helping both the NHS and our mission to decarbonise."

"The time has come to build on those pockets of best practice and enable the whole nation to travel easily and safely around their neighbourhoods without feeling compelled to rely on cars. I'm honoured to be asked to lead on this and help deliver the ambitious vision laid out in the government's Gear Change strategy and other local transport policies.

"This will be a legacy we will proud to leave for our children and for future generations. It's time to make it a reality; it's time for a quiet revolution."