National

The Portas Review highlighted the challenges that face our high streets and town centres. With shopping habits changing, high streets need to evolve – to build on their strengths and offer a viable and exciting alternative to out-of-town and internet shopping. High streets and town centres that are fit for the 21st century need to offer a different mix of retail, services and facilities, a different style of interaction, and a variety of experiences that are about more than shopping.

Town centres and high streets have buildings and roads, but the spaces in-between are what hold them together as a place – the open spaces, streets, squares, green spaces and the network of pavements and pedestrian thoroughfares that knit them together. All too often, these spaces are used as no more than that – thoroughfares – and we start to forget that they can be so much more.

This document is aimed at anyone working to improve their high street, town centre or retail area, whether you are a neighbourhood partnership, a group of businesses, a private landowner or a local authority. Its goal is to remind us of the potential of these urban spaces, and how, with some imagination and creative thought, they can add identity to a place to help combat clone town syndrome, and help make the local high street a destination of choice.

The section at the back of this document aims to signpost some of the key documents, guidance, tools and sources of support that you may find helpful in thinking about how best to design or use the urban spaces in your area.

People have always wanted to reach destinations quickly, safely and efficiently. But as the UK transport environment has become increasingly complex, transport’s impact on health has become unnecessarily harmful - to the point where it is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality.

Our aim is to show the positive effect that integrating health into transport policy will have and we propose areas for action that prioritise health for all relevant transport sectors.

Our new report is intended for transport, energy, sustainability and climate change policy makers with strategic or operational responsibility for public health and health promotion in the UK, and will be of interest to health professionals and the public.

The Cycle to Work Alliance has conducted this research project to gain a better understanding of the health and environmental benefits of the cycle to work scheme and the motivations that have driven demand from the users of the scheme, and the employers who offer it.

The questions focused on issues regarding CO2 emissions and health; the analysis of the data looks at the role the scheme plays in improving employee engagement, encouraging healthier lives and in helping the UK meeting its CO2 emissions reduction targets.

The commentary and views expressed in this Behavioural Impact Analysis (except where specific quotations are given) are the Cycle to Work Alliance‟s own.

Expert testimony from Colin Poole submitted and published by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellents (NICE) in Spring 2012.

Current Board structure of Cycling Embassy of Great Britain for review at AGM 2012

Amended accounts from the 2012 AGM

Agenda for AGM to take place in Bristol on 26th May 2012.

The Netherlands have a tradition of high bicycle usage and a long history of research on effective policies for promoting cycling. Findings in Dutch studies can be useful in the Danish Bikeability-project that has the objective to increase the level of knowledge in relation to bicycle based transport and to contribute to more efficient and qualified urban planning and management. This report discusses a number of Dutch case studies on the effects of investments in bicycle infrastructure. The reviewed studies include the three ‘classical’ cases in the 20th century: rather large investments in the cities of Tilburg, The Hague and Delft that were evaluated extensively by before and after studies. Other, smaller and more recent cases include the evaluation of shared space, a bicycle street, and interurban highways for cyclists. A general conclusion is that policies can be effective in sustaining high levels of cycling and strengthening cycling culture.