West Sussex County Council has allocated £150,000 to help more children walk, wheel, scoot or cycle to and from school. The programme will combine support for schools’ travel plans with practical activities for pupils, including cycle skills, bike maintenance and road-safety training.
The allocation is intended to make active journeys a more regular option for families. It covers a range of activities rather than a single construction project, with schools offered resources and specialist help to develop and deliver initiatives.
Examples include walk-to-school challenges, reward schemes for journeys by bike or scooter, and competitions encouraging pupils to decorate their bicycles. The programme also aims to address road safety awareness and barriers that can make active travel more difficult.
Support for schools and colleges
Two active travel specialists are involved in delivering the work. One is working with 12 pre-selected schools, while the other is available to work with any West Sussex school or college interested in taking part until late September 2027.
The 12 schools have not been named in the funding announcement, and a breakdown of how the £150,000 will be divided between activities has not been given. The announcement describes the project as lasting 12 months but also gives an April 2025 to March 2027 period for the first specialist’s work with the selected schools. Those descriptions do not align, leaving the duration of that strand unclear.
The practical support includes help with school travel planning, recognising that preparing plans and organising activities take staff time. Such plans can record how a school community travels, identify concerns and keep track of initiatives and requests for help. Schools and colleges interested in the programme can contact the county council’s active travel team.
The £150,000 is part of a wider £1.8 million county investment in active travel, rather than an additional sum on top of it. The allocation is for a programme of support; it is not an announced payment to every family or a stated grant of £150,000 to each school.
Earlier changes around school gates
West Sussex has also undertaken separate work to improve routes around schools. In October, completed improvements were identified at schools in Arundel, Shoreham and Worthing, including crossing points, wider footways, raised crossing areas and resurfacing. Those physical schemes are distinct from the activities described in the new school travel allocation.
A separate School Streets initiative restricts motor vehicles on roads directly outside participating schools at drop-off and pick-up times. Exceptions include residents’ vehicles, businesses, Blue Badge holders and emergency services. The schools named in those earlier schemes have not been identified as the 12 pre-selected for the new programme.
How children travel
Across England, walking accounted for 42 per cent of trips to and from school by children aged five to 16 in 2025. Among five-to-10-year-olds, 47 per cent of school trips were walked and 45 per cent were made by car. For those aged 11 to 16, the figures were 38 per cent on foot and 27 per cent by car.
These figures describe trips across England, not the proportion of West Sussex children using each mode. Changes to the travel diary used to collect the 2025 figures may have affected recorded rates for some short walks and car trips, so comparisons need care.
For children who did not usually walk to school, distance, the time a journey takes and children being too young were among the most frequently selected reasons. The new West Sussex programme offers a mixture of planning, activities and skills training, but no outcome figures have yet been announced for it.
