Project to prescribe walking and cycling met with resistance

In July 2023, it was announced that Bradford would be one of 11 local authorities to be awarded funding from the Active Travel Social Prescribing Pilot, with the district getting £1.34m.

It would see doctors urge people to take up cycling or join walking sessions if they feel exercise would prove more effective than medication. A prescription might include support to get started cycling or become more confident on a bike, to build up fitness with a walk leader or to find safe routes to use for walking, running or cycling everyday journeys.

But a new report looking at the success of the scheme has revealed that there has not only been “low levels of acceptance” of active travel like cycling and walking from some people involved, but also “levels of resistance.”

Detail of the scheme’s progress has been included in a report on various transport schemes in the district that will go before Bradford Council’s Regeneration and Environment Scrutiny Committee on Tuesday.

Members will hear that despite the aims of the scheme, referrals from GPs “have not been as productive as initially assumed.”

The manager of the programme has told the Telegraph & Argus that the scheme is being “tweaked” and there will be a push on better promoting the benefits of active travel.

The report says: “From a sample of 295 participants, only 19 per cent came from the classic referral route of support/clinical settings, while 23 per cent came from the Voluntary and Community Sector.

“Due to resource constraints, co-design limitations, time, and General Data Protection Regulation, the Primary Care Network route has not been as productive as initially assumed.

“Lessons learnt have been taken from this and are periodically reviewed.”

A cycle lane in Bradford city centre (Image: T&A)

The report goes on to say that a review is being carried out “to understand how interested and aware people are of local paths, walking routes, and cycleways, what support they would like to get more active, and where they would want to see future schemes.”

Referring to why the scheme has not been as successful as hoped, the report says: “It is acknowledged that the Community Readiness should have been delivered prior to the team being in position.

“Preliminary reports have found low levels of understanding and acceptance of active travel, with levels of resistance.

“This means we are working from a very low level of understanding and engagement, which typically leads to failure.

“Issues such as misuse of infrastructure, damage, or anti-social behaviour (e.g., parking on cycle paths or driving on infrastructure) are common.

“Discussions are underway to link this pilot to an established local exercise referral scheme, already well-used by local GPs and health professionals as a safe route for people who wish to get more active.”

James Greenwood, Active Travel Social Prescribing Manager, said: “At the start of the project, engagement with communities showed us that community readiness for Active Travel was low, so we’ve invested heavily in changing that with funding from Active Travel England.

“Since the launch of the Active Travel Social Prescribing Project, we’ve trained around 100 volunteers and partners in Travel Training, Walk Leader Training, Ride (cycling) Leader Training and Bikeability.

“We’ve had around 350 people actively engage with us through our survey which supports our pilot project.

“Around £120k has gone to community organisations across the pilot areas supporting active travel initiatives getting communities moving, everything from cycle training to public transport training.

“We’ve engaged with around 100 voluntary and community organisations across our pilot areas of Barkerend, Bradford Moor, Manningham, Girlington and Central Keighley listening and acting.

“As a result, people told us e-bike are needs in Bradford because of its hilly landscape.

“This learning led to us providing over 120 people on e-bikes for a six-month period as part of a subsidised subscription model with some participants racking up 100s of kilometres in commutes to work every month.

“While the first year’s subscription scheme is coming to an end for new referrals, we are busy taking the learning and looking at how we tweak things for a future scheme.

“There is still work to do to increase community readiness and awareness of Active Travel and we will be investing further in marketing, communications and engagement activity in the coming year to achieve this.”