£104m for the National Cycle Network
What Today's Announcement Means for Transport Planning and Development.
Today — Tuesday 22 September 2026 — the government announced £104 million of new funding for the National Cycle Network (NCN), describing it as the largest multi-year funding package the network has ever received. The announcement was made by Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander at Active Travel England's Making Active Places conference in Manchester, where she pledged to go — in her words — "hell for leather on active travel."
The funding will be managed by the Walk Wheel Cycle Trust — the charity that operates the National Cycle Network — and will be deployed over four years to create new traffic-free routes, remove barriers, resurface and widen existing paths, improve crossings, and make the network more inclusive and accessible, including for wheelchair users, families, and older people.
For anyone working in transport planning or development in England, today's announcement is worth understanding in detail. The National Cycle Network directly intersects with planning applications across the country — as a consultee, as a material consideration in transport assessments, and increasingly as infrastructure that new development is expected to connect to and support. This post explains what the announcement means, how the funding will be spent, and what the practical implications are for planning and development.
What is the National Cycle Network?
The National Cycle Network is a 12,000-mile network of signed cycling and walking routes across the UK, developed and maintained by the Walk Wheel Cycle Trust (formerly known as Sustrans). It runs through cities, towns, villages and countryside, and includes both traffic-free paths — along former railway lines, canal towpaths, and purpose-built greenways — and on-road signed routes on quieter roads.
The NCN is the largest active travel infrastructure network in the UK. According to Active Travel England, every £1 invested in it returns an estimated £4.10 in wider economic and social benefits, including reduced congestion, improved public health, and lower carbon emissions.
Despite its scale, the network has faced significant challenges in recent years. Many on-road sections run along roads that are too busy or fast to be genuinely usable by the majority of people who would like to cycle. Parts of the traffic-free network are in poor condition — surfaces damaged by weather and tree roots, barriers that make the routes inaccessible to non-standard cycles, and sections with inadequate lighting or poor sightlines that deter use, particularly by women and girls.
Today's £104 million commitment is specifically targeted at addressing these challenges — converting on-road sections to traffic-free paths, removing physical barriers, improving surfaces, and making the network safer and more accessible.
How will the £104 million be spent?
The funding will be used for a range of improvements to the National Cycle Network across England, including:
New traffic-free routes, moving sections of the network that currently run on roads too busy or fast for most people to use comfortably onto new dedicated off-road paths. This is one of the most significant improvements that can be made to the usability of a cycling route — a traffic-free path attracts a fundamentally different range of users from an on-road route, including families with children, older people, and people new to cycling.
Improved crossings, making it safer and easier for cyclists and pedestrians to cross busy roads on NCN routes. This directly addresses one of the most common barriers to active travel — the experience of a pleasant traffic-free path being interrupted by a frightening and difficult road crossing that deters less confident users.
Resurfacing and widening, bringing existing paths up to a standard that is genuinely usable and comfortable for all users, including wheelchair users and people using wider cycles such as cargo bikes, hand cycles, and adapted cycles.
Removal of barriers, including the metal barriers and chicanes that have been installed on many NCN paths as anti-motorcycle measures but which effectively exclude many disabled users, parents with buggies and cargo bikes, and older cyclists. Active Travel England's design guidance has been clear that these barriers are unacceptable on funded routes, and today's investment will fund their systematic removal.
Improved safety for women and girls, addressing specific features of the network — lighting, sightlines, landscaping, and the design of isolated sections — that research has identified as deterrents to use by women and girls. This reflects the government's broader recognition that active travel infrastructure that feels unsafe for some users is not genuinely accessible infrastructure.
How does this fit with the wider active travel investment programme?
Today's £104 million announcement is the latest in a series of significant active travel funding commitments made by the government over the past year, and it sits within a much larger investment programme.
In December 2025, Active Travel England allocated £626 million to councils across England to expand walking, wheeling and cycling routes between 2026 and 2030. The largest recipients were the West Midlands Combined Authority at just over £36 million, followed by Greater Manchester at £35.4 million and West Yorkshire at £29 million.
In June 2026, the government published the Third Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy — CWIS3 — backed by over £4.5 billion of investment to 2030, with national targets for more than half of short trips in towns and cities to be made actively by 2035, and 60% of children aged 5 to 16 travelling to school actively by the same year. We covered CWIS3 in detail in an earlier post
Today's National Cycle Network announcement builds directly on CWIS3, which committed the government to establishing the foundations of a national active travel network by 2030 — with all safe routes mapped on a single digital platform and consistent wayfinding signage across the country in the same way that the road network is navigable today.
Together, these announcements represent the most sustained and substantial commitment to active travel infrastructure in England's history. Active Travel Commissioner Chris Boardman — the Olympic cycling gold medallist who has championed investment in cycling infrastructure for more than two decades — described today's funding as providing the long-term certainty needed to plan and deliver larger, more ambitious improvements.
Not everyone is convinced the scale matches the ambition. Respected active travel journalist Laura Laker, writing on social media today, noted that £104 million over four years is £26 million per year — which she compared to the cost of upgrading a single A-road junction. Her point reflects a genuine tension in the government's active travel programme: the targets are bold, but the funding, while welcome, is modest compared to what is routinely spent on road infrastructure.
What does this mean for planning applications?
The National Cycle Network is directly relevant to the planning system in several ways, and today's investment announcement strengthens that relevance.
Transport assessments and the NCN. Where a development site is located near a National Cycle Network route, planning officers and highway authorities will expect the transport assessment to engage with it. This means not just noting the route's existence, but assessing whether it is genuinely usable — is it traffic-free? Is the surface adequate? Are there barriers that would prevent a cyclist travelling from the development to a nearby town centre or station by the NCN route? — and, where the route is substandard, demonstrating how the development will contribute to its improvement.
As the NCN is improved and extended through today's investment, the baseline against which development is assessed will rise. A development that is located close to an NCN route that is being upgraded to a high-quality traffic-free standard will face a stronger expectation that it connects to that route and enables its residents or users to use it for everyday journeys.
Section 106 contributions and the NCN. In areas where the National Cycle Network runs near or through a development site, local planning authorities may seek financial contributions through Section 106 agreements towards the improvement of adjacent NCN infrastructure. Today's announcement of dedicated national funding does not remove this expectation — rather, it creates a clearer framework within which local contributions can be matched against national investment for greater effect.
Travel plans and NCN connectivity. A travel plan submitted alongside a planning application for a development near the National Cycle Network should now be expected to address NCN connectivity explicitly — identifying which NCN routes are accessible from the site, whether they are genuinely usable for everyday journeys, and what measures the development will put in place to enable and encourage residents or employees to use them.
The national digital active travel platform. CWIS3 commits to consolidating all local active travel plans and routes into a single national digital platform by 2030, making the active travel network as navigable as the road network is today through standard mapping apps. As this platform is developed, the quality and connectivity of NCN routes near development sites will become more visible and more easily checked by planning officers, highway authorities, and applicants. This will make it harder to ignore the NCN in transport assessments, and will raise the bar for what constitutes a genuine assessment of active travel options.
What the announcement means for developers specifically
For developers whose sites are near the National Cycle Network — or near routes that are planned for improvement under today's investment — there are several practical implications.
Know your local NCN routes. The Walk Wheel Cycle Trust publishes maps of the National Cycle Network online, and local authorities are required under CWIS3 to maintain Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plans (LCWIPs) that identify the priority routes in their area, including NCN connections. Understanding where the NCN runs relative to your development site — and what quality it currently is — is an important early step in the pre-application process.
Engage with improvement plans early. If a section of the NCN adjacent to your site is identified for improvement under today's investment programme, engaging with the Walk Wheel Cycle Trust and your local authority early gives you the opportunity to align your development's active travel provision with those plans. A development that actively contributes to an NCN improvement — for example, by delivering a section of new traffic-free path as part of the site layout — is in a significantly stronger position in transport assessment terms than one that simply notes the existence of a nearby route.
Design connections into the scheme from the outset. The most common mistake in relation to active travel and the NCN is to acknowledge the existence of a nearby route in the transport assessment without actually designing a clear, direct, and safe connection from the development to that route. A cycle route that runs 200 metres from a development site is of limited value if there is no safe and obvious way to get from the site to that route. The connection matters as much as the route itself.
Do not underestimate the quality bar. Active Travel England's design guidance — known as LTN 1/20 — sets out clear standards for the quality of cycling infrastructure, including minimum path widths, surface standards, junction treatments, and the removal of barriers. Where a development is delivering or contributing to NCN infrastructure, it will be expected to meet these standards. Infrastructure that falls short — narrow paths, inadequate crossings, retained barriers — is increasingly being refused funding and challenged at planning stage.
The broader picture — what today's announcement signal
Beyond the specific funding, today's announcement signals something important about the direction of transport policy in England. The Transport Secretary's description of the government's approach as going "hell for leather on active travel" is notable — not just as a turn of phrase, but as a policy signal that active travel has moved from a niche concern to a central government priority.
For the planning system, this matters. Planning decisions are made against a policy framework — the NPPF, the Local Plan, the Local Transport Plan — that is increasingly weighted towards active travel. Every announcement like today's strengthens the political and policy context in which planning officers, highway authorities, and planning committees make their decisions. Schemes that take active travel seriously — designing genuine, high-quality connections to the walking and cycling network from the outset — will find themselves increasingly aligned with that policy direction. Schemes that treat it as a box-ticking exercise will find the bar rising against them.
Today is a reminder that the trajectory of transport policy in England is clear and consistent. The funding may be debated, the pace may frustrate campaigners, and the gap between the ambition and the infrastructure budget remains significant. But the direction — towards a genuinely usable, nationally connected active travel network — is not in doubt.
A quick summary
The government announced £104 million for the National Cycle Network today — 22 September 2026 — at Active Travel England's Making Active Places conference in Manchester.
The funding will be managed by the Walk Wheel Cycle Trust over four years and used for new traffic-free routes, improved crossings, resurfacing, widening, barrier removal, and improved safety.
The announcement builds on the £626 million allocated to councils in December 2025 and the £4.5 billion CWIS3 strategy published in June 2026, as part of a sustained and growing active travel investment programme.
For developers and planners, the National Cycle Network is a material consideration in transport assessments, travel plans, and Section 106 negotiations — and the quality bar for engaging with it is rising.
The most important practical steps for developers are: know your local NCN routes, engage with improvement plans at pre-application stage, design connections from the outset, and meet the quality standards set by Active Travel England's LTN 1/20 guidance.
Today's announcement reinforces a policy direction that is clear and consistent: active travel is a central government priority, and the planning system is expected to support and deliver it.
CLOSING PARAGRAPH:
Today's announcement will be debated — the scale of funding will be questioned, the pace of delivery will be scrutinised, and the gap between the ambition and the money will be pointed out by those who know the network best. But for anyone working in transport planning and development, the practical message is straightforward: the National Cycle Network is becoming a more significant material consideration in the planning system, the investment to improve it is now confirmed, and the expectation that new development will connect to it, contribute to it, and support it is only going to grow.
This post is intended as a general guide to current policy and investment announcements. For advice specific to your development or planning application, always consult a qualified transport planner or planning consultant.
