Northern Ireland’s Active Travel Ambitions Are Being Undermined by Departmental Accounting Tricks…

Duncan Dollimore is Head of Campaigns at Cycling UK

The 2022 Climate Act promised to transform transport in Northern Ireland by mandating that 10% of the transport budget be spent on walking and cycling infrastructure. But the Department for Infrastructure’s creative accounting has quadrupled “spend” on paper while leaving real projects unfunded, risking congestion, road deaths, and stalled progress on sustainable travel.

Northern Ireland isn’t usually first out of the gate on new laws — from anti-poverty strategies to organ donation reform, policy change here is often slow. That’s why the Climate Act’s legal requirement to invest 10% of the transport budget in active travel was such a landmark moment — and why the Department’s recent accounting manoeuvres feel like such a betrayal.

There have been manifesto commitments in both Scotland and the Republic of Ireland, but no nation other than NI has made this a legal requirement. That matters because it guarantees continuity of spending regardless of political shifts and ensures any change would require cross-party support. The hope was this would finally drive real change: money is needed for safe infrastructure, and infrastructure drives cultural shift.

So, what happened after the Climate Act was passed in 2022?

Progress was slow, for years the Department simply said “plans were being developed.” At an Infrastructure Committee meeting in 2024, MLA Mark Durkan asked Deputy Secretary Colin Woods how they planned to meet the 10% target. Woods replied that they “take it very seriously: it is, literally, the law… An organisation that spends £12 million one year cannot spend £70 million the next.” This was reassuring: they recognised the law and the need to grow spending from 2% towards 10%. Most supporters accept that ramp-up will take time, but only meaningful year-on-year increases will deliver results.

This may seem tedious and semantic, but it is the key to protecting the active travel budget, so it’s important to be clear about what it means:

• The amendment was passed on the basis that our current spend on active travel was 2% of the transport budget.
• In February 2024 the Department reaffirmed this and calculated 2% as £12 million, with the target of 10% as £70 million.

Around a year and a half later, In June 2025, DfI Director Colin Hutchinson told the committee they had recalculated transport spend over the past three years at £850 million annually — meaning 10% was £85 million, even more than the £70 million previously reported.

Then he dropped the bombshell.

Mr Hutchinson said they had looked “not just at the brand-new, shiny infrastructure” but “at what the Department has done historically.” That “historical” spending includes streetlighting and maintenance — existing costs now reclassified as active travel. On this basis, DfI claimed they have already been spending £50 million per year, or 6% of the transport budget, quadrupling the active travel budget without spending a penny!

It’s an exercise in creative accounting that mirrors how a previous Westminster government “reduced” child poverty simply by redefining it. In practice, this decision removes around £38 million per year from potential new projects — crossings that won’t be built, cycle routes that won’t happen, and communities left without real transport choice.

No other UK or Irish government defines active travel spend in this way, and the change appears to have been made entirely within the Department, without consultation or public debate.

The Northern Ireland Audit Office (NIAO) has now confirmed just how serious this is. Its 2025 report found the revised estimates “were developed internally… and were not subject to consultation or formal engagement with external stakeholders.” It warned that “such an approach could create an impression of the Department’s actions not being within the spirit of the Act and instead applying a window-dressing approach… simply reclassifying existing and ongoing expenditure lines could not be reasonably expected to deliver improved outcomes and may further damage stakeholder confidence.”

This is more than semantics — it’s a profound failure of governance. The absence of stakeholder engagement undermines trust, and as NIAO points out, this “window-dressing” is likely to be “self-defeating.” Without significant and genuine new investment, the promise of the Climate Act risks becoming meaningless.

DfI has often claimed it will “prioritise sustainable travel”, but instead of planning transformative projects, it spent a year and a half working out how to minimise the law’s impact. The result? Little real progress and a likely swap of car dependency for electric car dependency — with continued congestion, road deaths, sedentary lifestyles, and air pollution.

The Chair of the Active Travel All Party Group has written to the Minister seeking justification for the new definitions, while MLAs from across the political spectrum have tabled questions on the opaque decision-making. So far, Ministerial answers have avoided acknowledging the accounting change, let alone addressing the lack of engagement. Now that NIAO has publicly warned of the risks, continued avoidance is untenable.

Ronald Reagan famously said, “Don’t tell me what you value, show me your budget and I’ll tell you what you value.” For DfI, sustainable travel remains a slogan, not a priority reflected in their budget.

The Climate Act was not a suggestion — it is a mandate to transform how we travel. Northern Ireland cannot afford for it to be reduced to an exercise in creative accounting.