Funding for School Travel

There are various funding and grant initiatives available to help you develop and fund ways to get your pupils and teachers walking and cycling to school.

DfES Capital Grants for School Travel Plans

The DfES Capital Grants scheme is available to schools on completion of their School Travel Plans. Schools should contact their LA School Travel Adviser (STA) for help with completing their plan.

The grants purpose is to promote or enable more sustainable travel to school and the amounts available are typically £5000 for primary and £10000 for secondary schools.

The deadline for this round of funding has passed (31st March 2007) but it is worth finding out about School Travel Plans in time for the next round. You can visit the Sustainable Schools website for more information.

Sustrans and Safe Routes to Schools

Sustrans, the sustainable transport charity, works on practical projects to encourage people to walk, cycle and use public transport for health, safety and environmental reasons. Their aim is to create a Safe Route to School for every child in the UK.

You can visit the Safe Routes to Schools website for updates on funding available for developing more environmentally friendly ways of getting to and from school.

Department of Transport - Walking Buses

The Department for Transport and DfES have announced a new scheme to provide grants of £1,000 a year for 3 years to state-funded primary schools in England who want to set up walking buses. This could be used to pay for a teaching assistant for 2 hours a week to organise and administer a walking bus, and to seek children and parent volunteers for the walking bus. Smaller grants ( £500 a year) are available as an alternative to support other school-based initiatives, for example Walk on Wednesday or Go for Gold , to increase walking to and from school.

All applications should be submitted by 31st January 2007, so this years deadline has passed, but if not all funds are allocated they will accept applications after this date.

Visit their website for more details