The £4.5 Billion Cycling and Walking Strategy
What CWIS3 Means for Planning and Development
INTRODUCTION:
On 12 June 2026, the government published the Third Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy — known in planning and transport circles as CWIS3. Backed by over £4.5 billion of public investment running to 2030, it sets the most ambitious active travel targets England has ever seen, and it has direct implications for how planning applications are assessed, how new developments are designed, and how local authorities approach transport across the country.
Active travel — a term that covers walking, wheeling (which includes mobility scooters, wheelchairs, and other non-motorised assisted modes), and cycling — has moved from the margins of transport policy to its centre over the past decade. CWIS3 consolidates that shift with hard national targets, substantial long-term funding, and a clear direction of travel for the planning system.
For anyone bringing forward a planning application, working in local government, or simply trying to understand where transport policy in England is heading, CWIS3 is an important document. This post explains what it says, what the key targets and commitments are, and what the practical implications are for planning and development.
What is the Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy?
The Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy is a statutory document — one that the Secretary of State for Transport is legally required to produce under the Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy provisions of the Infrastructure Act 2015. It sets out the government's plans for investment in walking and cycling infrastructure in England, including the funding, the targets, and the key programmes through which that investment will flow.
The first strategy, known as CWIS1, was published in 2017. The second, CWIS2, followed in 2022. CWIS3, published in June 2026, covers the period from 2025/26 to 2029/30 and represents a significant step up in both ambition and funding compared to its predecessors.
The strategy is produced jointly by the Department for Transport and Active Travel England — the government's dedicated agency for walking and cycling, established in 2022 to provide technical advice, inspection, and funding support to local authorities delivering active travel infrastructure.
The headline figures
The scale of CWIS3 is significantly larger than previous strategies. The key numbers are:
£4.5 billion of public investment in active travel over the five-year period to 2030. This compares to an initial commitment of £3.8 billion under CWIS2, which was later reduced to approximately £3 billion in practice. CWIS3 therefore represents a meaningful real-terms increase, even accounting for inflation.
£616 million in capital funding flowing directly through Active Travel England from 2026 to 2030, on top of £300 million already committed for 2024 to 2026. This is the funding that councils apply to for specific walking and cycling infrastructure schemes — cycle lanes, footway improvements, safer crossings, and so on.
£15.6 billion through the new Transport for City Regions fund, a wider pot of transport funding available to combined authorities that can be used to support active travel infrastructure alongside other transport investment. The devolution of funding into larger, flexible pots is a deliberate policy choice, intended to give local and regional leaders more freedom to join up active travel with public transport and other investment.
5,000 new walking, wheeling and cycling routes and 10,000 safer crossings to be delivered over the next five years.
A target for more than half of short trips in towns and cities — defined as journeys under five miles — to be made by walking, wheeling, or cycling by 2035.
A target for 60% of children aged 5 to 16 to travel to school actively by 2035, up from the current figure of around 47%.
The national targets and why they matter for planning
The targets set in CWIS3 are not just aspirations. They have direct policy consequences, because planning authorities are expected to make decisions that are consistent with national policy — and CWIS3 is now part of that national policy framework.
The 55% target for active travel's share of short trips in towns and cities by 2035 is particularly significant. It implies a substantial shift away from car use for everyday journeys in urban areas — a shift that cannot happen without new development being designed to support it from the outset.
For developers and planning applicants, this translates into a clearer and more quantified expectation that new development will contribute to — rather than work against — active travel. A housing scheme that provides excellent cycle storage, safe walking routes to the nearest school and town centre, and good connections to public transport is now more explicitly aligned with national policy than one that prioritises car parking and provides cycle storage as an afterthought.
For planning officers and highway authorities, the CWIS3 targets strengthen the policy basis for requiring active travel infrastructure as a condition of planning permission, for seeking contributions through Section 106 agreements towards local walking and cycling networks, and for resisting schemes that would compromise existing or planned active travel routes
The target for school travel is also notable in planning terms. Schools are among the highest trip-generating uses assessed in transport assessments, and the CWIS3 target reinforces the case for school streets schemes, active travel requirements in planning conditions, and the design of new residential developments in a way that creates safe, direct walking and cycling routes to nearby schools.
What Active Travel England's expanded role means
Active Travel England (ATE) was established in 2022 as an executive agency of the Department for Transport, with a remit to support local authorities in designing and delivering high-quality walking and cycling infrastructure. Since its creation, ATE has built a reputation for rigorous design standards — its inspectors assess schemes funded through ATE grants against the government's Cycle Infrastructure Design guidance (known as LTN 1/20), and funding can be withheld from schemes that do not meet those standards.
CWIS3 expands ATE's role significantly, in response to the government's devolution agenda. From 2026, ATE will offer a broader range of services to councils and combined authorities, including:
Technical advice and support for local authorities developing Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plans (LCWIPs) — the strategic documents that set out a network of walking and cycling routes for an area and form the basis for investment decisions.
Planning and design advice for specific schemes, particularly those that connect new development to existing active travel networks.
Expanded inspection and assurance services, helping councils ensure that the schemes they deliver meet national quality standards and represent good value for money.
Support for embedding active travel in local planning — working with planning authorities to ensure that new development contributes to, rather than undermines, local active travel networks.
That last point is directly relevant to the planning application process. ATE is increasingly expected to be a consultee — a body that is formally consulted on planning applications — for significant developments in areas where active travel connections are a material consideration. Developers whose schemes interact with existing or planned cycling and walking infrastructure should expect ATE to have a view on the adequacy of the active travel provision.
HEADING: Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plans
One of the most practically important elements of CWIS3 for the planning system is its commitment to Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plans — LCWIPs — being in place across England.
A LCWIP is a long-term strategic plan, produced by a local authority or combined authority, that maps out the walking and cycling network for its area — identifying the key routes that need to be created, improved, or connected up to provide a coherent, usable network for everyday journeys. LCWIPs are typically developed over a 10 to 20 year horizon and are used to prioritise infrastructure investment and to inform planning decisions.
The reason LCWIPs matter for developers is that they are increasingly treated as a material consideration in planning decisions. A development site that sits on or adjacent to an LCWIP-identified priority route will face scrutiny of whether the scheme supports or compromises that route. A developer who can demonstrate that their scheme positively contributes to the delivery of the LCWIP network — for example, by delivering a section of a priority cycling route as part of the development — is in a significantly stronger position than one who has not engaged with the LCWIP at all.
CWIS3 commits the government and Active Travel England to supporting all local and combined authorities to have LCWIPs in place and to use them as the basis for investment decisions. As more authorities develop and formalise their LCWIPs, the planning system will increasingly treat them as definitive documents for assessing the active travel implications of new development.
What CWIS3 means for transport assessments and travel plans
Transport Assessments and Travel Plans — the documents we have covered in earlier posts — are directly affected by the policy direction set by CWIS3.
Transport Assessments submitted alongside planning applications for significant developments are expected to assess the active travel implications of the scheme — not just the vehicle trip generation and junction impact. Under the updated NPPF and now CWIS3, this means genuinely engaging with the walking and cycling network around the site, identifying barriers and gaps, and setting out how the development will address them.
A transport assessment that contains a perfunctory section on cycling and walking — listing the distance to the nearest bus stop and the number of cycle parking spaces — is increasingly unlikely to satisfy planning officers in authorities that are taking CWIS3 seriously. The expectation is growing for applicants to demonstrate a real understanding of the existing and planned active travel network, and to show how the development connects to and strengthens it.
Travel Plans — the ongoing commitments to encourage sustainable travel once a development is occupied — similarly need to engage meaningfully with active travel. CWIS3 strengthens the policy context for requiring travel plans to include specific, measurable active travel targets, dedicated cycle training and promotion initiatives, and real investment in facilities for walking and cycling rather than token gestures.
School streets and the planning system
One of the specific commitments in CWIS3 that intersects directly with planning is the expansion of school streets schemes.
A school street is a road outside a school that is temporarily closed to through traffic during school drop-off and pick-up times, creating a safer environment for children arriving on foot or by bicycle. School streets have been successfully delivered in many London boroughs and a growing number of areas across England, and CWIS3 commits to expanding them significantly over the next five years.
For developers bringing forward residential schemes near schools, the school streets agenda has a practical planning implication. Planning applications for new housing in areas where school streets are in place or planned may need to demonstrate that vehicle access routes do not conflict with school street closures, and that the design of the development supports rather than undermines the school's active travel environment.
More broadly, CWIS3's emphasis on enabling children to travel actively to school reinforces the planning expectation that new residential development will provide safe, direct, and attractive walking and cycling routes to nearby schools — not just to the nearest bus stop.
HEADING: What this means in practice if you are making a planning application
The cumulative effect of CWIS3, combined with the updated NPPF and the Better Connected strategy we covered in an earlier post, is a consistently stronger policy environment for active travel across the planning system.
For developers and applicants, the practical implications are these:
Engage with your local LCWIP at pre-application stage. If your local authority has a LCWIP — and an increasing number do — understanding where your site sits in relation to the identified network is an important early step. If the site is on or near a priority route, the planning authority will expect to see evidence of how the development supports it.
Design active travel into the scheme from the outset. Cycle storage, pedestrian routes, connections to existing paths and crossings, and the design of streets within the development all need to be considered at the layout stage — not added in later. ATE's design guidance LTN 1/20 sets out the standards that active travel infrastructure is expected to meet, and familiarity with those standards at the design stage will save significant time and revision later.
Expect more scrutiny of active travel in transport assessments. A growing number of planning authorities and highway authorities are treating the active travel section of transport assessments as substantive rather than formulaic. Investing in a thorough, evidence-based active travel assessment — one that maps the existing network, identifies gaps, and makes specific commitments to addressing them — will strengthen the application.
Consider the school travel implications. If the site is within walking or cycling distance of a school, the CWIS3 targets for school travel are now a relevant policy context. Demonstrating that the development supports rather than undermines active school travel — through good pedestrian design, safe crossing provision, and school travel commitments in the travel plan — will be increasingly expected.
A quick summary
The Third Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy (CWIS3) was published on 12 June 2026, backed by over £4.5 billion of investment in walking and cycling infrastructure to 2030.
Key targets include more than half of short trips in towns and cities being made actively by 2035, and 60% of children travelling to school actively by the same year.
5,000 new walking, wheeling and cycling routes and 10,000 safer crossings are planned over the next five years.
Active Travel England's role is expanding, with greater involvement in planning advice, LCWIP support, and scheme inspection across England.
Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plans are increasingly material considerations in planning decisions. Developers should engage with their local LCWIP at pre-application stage.
Transport assessments and travel plans need to engage meaningfully with active travel — not just tick a box. The policy context for requiring substantive active travel commitments from new development has never been stronger.
CLOSING PARAGRAPH:
CWIS3 represents the most significant commitment to active travel investment England has seen, and it sits within a consistent and mutually reinforcing set of policy documents — the NPPF, the Better Connected strategy, and now CWIS3 — all pointing in the same direction. For the planning system, the message is clear: active travel is no longer a nice-to-have that gets added to planning applications as an afterthought. It is a central policy objective that new development is expected to actively support, from the earliest stages of design through to occupation and beyond.
This post is intended as a general guide to planning policy. For advice specific to your project or application, always consult a qualified transport planner or planning consultant.
