Agenda and draft minutes

The Head of Transport and Network Management for West Sussex County Council provided the group with an introduction and overview of his department.

Over the past two decades WSCC had been planning and delivering various walking and cycling schemes and had bolstered their efforts from 2016. The WSCC Walking and Cycling Strategy had been re-written to help borough and district councils to negotiate their own walking and cycling schemes. In 2018 WSCC had formed the LCWIP Group Partnership to help local authorities across the county produce their own LCWIPs. These local authority LCWIP routes could then be connected by WSCC.

WSCC invited WSP to rank the schemes within local LCWIPs to create a list of priority schemes that would be suitable for funding from the active travel fund. Several schemes that ranked in the top ten belonged to Horsham District Council. WSCC would be able to confirm which schemes had been awarded capability funding mid-October 2021. Following the capability funding WSCC would then be able to bid for active travel funding.

The schemes up for the first round of capability funding were smaller schemes as it would be easier to receive funding and implement them. Having smaller schemes in place would make it easier to bolster and extend them to form full routes.