Introduction

Welcome from Danny Williams, Chief Executive Officer, Active Travel England

Active Travel England (ATE) works to transform the role that cycling and walking plays in our transport system. 

Increasing cycling and walking can help tackle some of the most challenging issues we face as a society – improving air quality, combatting climate change, improving health and wellbeing, addressing inequalities and tackling congestion on our roads.

As an Executive Agency, commissioning body and inspectorate, ATE’s role is to improve the planning, design and quality of walking and cycling schemes, ensuring they are accessible for all. 

As the Chief Operating Officer (COO) you will be a key member of the agency’s Senior Leadership Team. This is an exciting challenge for someone with excellent project delivery skills and a proven track-record of highly effective, strategic and inspiring leadership

I am committed to ensuring that we draw candidates from a variety of backgrounds and that the department’s appointments are open to fresh talent, experience and perspectives. That means we need greater diversity in our candidates – whether in terms of ethnicity, gender, disability or background.

Active Travel England is now entering a new phase, one that will see it strengthen and grow. As COO you will have a key role to play in this, ensuring the frameworks are there to succeed.  It is a demanding role, but your impact will be transformational; now and in the years to come. We need to get England moving differently and this is your opportunity to lead this transformation.

About Active Travel England

Active travel is key to delivering the governments missions and that is why we are continuing to work towards increasing the number of local journeys being walked, wheeled or cycled by 2030.

ATE is a regulatory agency with a big vision. we are the responsible for transforming the role that walking and cycling play in England’s transport system to support this objective.

We are doing this by:

• investing in and improving standards for active travel schemes across England integrating active travel in the planning and development system
• focusing on inclusivity and accessibility and giving people from all walks of life the opportunity to try active travel
• helping councils to access state of the art data and analysis to use in active travel planning and design

We were established in 2022 and have come a long way since then.  We are now home to a statutory consultee function in the spatial planning system and an inspectorate, housing specialist in town planning, engineering and highways design.

We have delivered the governments flagship active travel capability ratings, assessing local ambition and capability in delivering active travel infrastructure and assured nearly £1bn of active travel infrastructure.

As we approach a new Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy period, we will continue to strive for excellence in the services we provide, champion innovation and exploit digital opportunities to drive efficiencies and ensure we can continue to deliver on the Governments ambitions for Walking, Wheeling and Cycling
 

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