Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plans

The West Yorkshire Combined Authority and its partner councils are developing Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plans for West Yorkshire.

What is a Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan?

In 2017 the Government published its first Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy (available online – click here to view it), which was accompanied by guidance for local authorities on ways to identify improvements for cycling and walking improvements, through the development of Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plans – known as “LCWIPs”.

The guidance and tools provided to Local Authorities are available online - click here to view them.

LCWIPs enable local authorities to take a long-term approach to the development of cycling and walking networks in there are, based on evidence on existing and future travel patterns and current barriers to walking and cycling.

Why are we developing Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plans?

Our West Yorkshire Transport Strategy 2040, adopted in 2017, sets out adopted policies to provide strategic and local networks of high quality walking and cycling routes and mid-term targets to increase the number of trips made by bike and on foot by 2027, by 300% and 10% respectively. The strategy can be accessed by clicking on this link.

The Combined Authority and its partner councils are amongst 44 authorities in England that have decided to develop LCWIPs to help fulfil these policies and targets, by identifying the improvements required to enable and encourage more people to make journeys on foot or by bike.

LCWIPs are being developed in advance of funding being secured to construct all the improvements identified through this work. However, having LCWIPs in place will help us decide what improvements to make and will help us make the case to Government for future investment in walking and cycling in our region.

How are we developing Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plans?

We are developing LCWIPs for each of the constituent areas within West Yorkshire (Bradford, Calderdale, Leeds, Kirklees and Wakefield) for each of our partner councils, which will be brought together as part of a West Yorkshire-wide Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan.

Our approach follows government guidance, and builds on work to identify networks for walking and cycling already carried out by partners in the region. More detail on the development process is provided in the detailed reports for each partner council area.

A lot of work is needed to create a comprehensive Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan that covers all the urban and rural areas of West Yorkshire and several phases of development are envisaged. The work underway now should be seen as the first phase of a longer term development process.

For this first phase of work, specific areas of focus were selected for walking and cycling based on a number of factors, including potential for more people to walk and cycle for everyday journeys, current provision across the region, future housing and employment sites, and opportunities to deliver improvements through existing investment programmes. More details of the areas of focus chosen for this first phase of work can be found on the individual pages for each partner council’s LCWIP using the links in the boxes below.

Each partner council’s LCWIP can be found on the individual pages for that area using the links below.

Engagement and next steps

Following a period of public engagement in autumn 2019, a report detailing the feedback received and the next steps is currently being produced. In the meantime, a series of engagement summaries can be found in the You Said, We Did section of this page.