– a briefing note from Hugh McClintock:-
In a discussions at Pedals meeting about “CAWAG” and Pedals representation it is sometimes clear, very understandably, that several people probably have only a hazy idea of what this is about and the background to it especially those who are still fairly new to Pedals meetings. I therefore agreed to circulate via the Pedals Discussion Group this note with some background information and to include this on our website.
“CAWAG” stands for “Greater Nottingham Cycling and Walking Advisory Group. It changed its title in January 2020 when Helen Hemstock, the CEO of Ridewise took over as Chair of the Group formally known (since it was set up in 2007) as the “CDG”, i.e Greater Nottingham Cycling Development Group. The CDG was previously chaired by Gary Smerdon-White (former Ridewise CEO) and then for a few years after Gary’s retirement by Matt Easter, the former Regional Director of Sustrans.
The CDG was set up following complaints from Pedals that Nottingham City Council, after taking over in 1998 from the County Council as the Local Highways Authority for the City, was tending to neglect cycling in its concentration on public transport issues, especially the new NET tram network plans and a major revamp of bus services.
Pedals, as the main local cycle campaign group, always had 2 places on the CDG, and Sustrans and CTC (for several years) were also involved, as well as the City and County Councils and, a bit later on, Highways England (now National Highways).
The City and County Councils were included in view of their key role as Local Highway Authorities, but the local District (Borough) Councils such as Broxtowe, Gedling and Rushcliffe were not. From the start, also, representatives were invited from Public Health (City Council) and the Police, although there has not always been regular attendance from them.
The intention of the CDG was to concentrate on a “strategic approach” to promoting cycling, with meetings every 2 months, and to try to avoid getting too bogged down in the details of kerb heights and white line markings, etc. Written scheme updates were circulated, along with the agenda, a few days before each meeting, and minutes were subsequently circulated. These were both circulated to Pedals activists and comments then invited at subsequent Pedals meetings.
When Helen Hemstock took over as Chair in 2020 she said that she wanted to make two changes. The first was to widen the scope of the group to include walking as well as cycling and the second was to spend less time discussing infrastructure issues and more on what are generally referred to as “behaviour change” type cycling promotion activities such as those carried out by Ridewise and British Cycling, i.e. concentrating on training and other ways than infrastructure of encouraging people and groups to cycle, working in particular with employers and schools as well as individuals. The scheme updates were no longer circulated.
Soon after this change was introduced came the start of COVID lockdown and for several months during the rest of 2020 our CAWAG meetings tended to concentrate on discussion of the Department for Transport ‘s (Emergency) Active Travel Fund schemes, now known as just “Active Travel Fund” schemes.
After some months of concentrating on these it became clear that other infrastructure developments, of particular interest to Pedals, were getting a little attention. This included the many DfT supported TCF (Transforming Cities Fund) schemes, for which Nottingham had a very successful bid early in 2020, and the many other issues, including problems with existing infrastructure, that Pedals always wants to take up with the City Council the County Council and National Highways, etc.
As a result, in 2021, we pressed the case for having more time again spent on discussing wider infrastructure issues as well as updates on the Active travel and TCF schemes. This eventually led early in 2022 to the setting up of a separate series of meetings, i.e. the Infrastructure Subgroup of CAWAG with meetings fixed about four times a year. Helen however made clear that she did not always wish to chair these subgroup meetings so, in the absence of any other independent Chair being appointed, I was asked to Chair the other subgroup meetings on behalf of Pedals.
After the first Infrastructure subgroup meeting in Spring 2022, I said that it was very hard to digest all the points made without having written scheme updates in advance to digest, to help the actual meeting to focus on the most important issues, and it was also disappointing that no arrangements were made for taking minutes, in the absence of volunteers to take this on.
In response to these complaints, it was agreed that resurrecting the old (CDG era) system of regular scheme updates would be useful, and that these should be circulated a week before each meeting. In return Pedals had to agree to submit our updated Outstanding Issues List a week earlier, i.e a month and a week before the meeting, to give plenty of time for the City and County Councils, and NH, to produce their responses.
Paul Hillier from the County Council had anyway insisted that they no longer had the staff resources and time to respond to individual issues being raised, on an ‘ad hoc’ basis and that, as part of the arrangements for the subgroup, issues must be bundled together as a comprehensive Pedals list, and that this would also then help him in assembling up to date information from various colleagues, including those in Via-East Midlands, to give us more informed responses.
This does mean however that it is now much more difficult for us to raise things one by one, and that we have to have a very long lead time for drafting and submitting our updated comprehensive Issues List, including my starting by circulating a draft list on which I invite comments and further suggestions, before I then submit it a month and a week ahead of each meeting. It is all rather cumbersome and time-consuming!
The Infrastructure subgroup meetings are attended by fewer people than the main CAWAG meetings, i.e. those with a particular interest in infrastructure including three of us from Pedals, Dave Smith, Peter Briggs and myself and representatives of the City and County Councils and National Highways and also one or two others such as James Hatchett from Sustrans and sometimes also someone from the Canal and River Trust, and also Chris Roy from Nottingham Trent University. At some recent meeting Paul Paine has however been allowed to join on behalf of NSAT (North-South Active Travelway). Notts CTC were until recently represented by Edmund Hopkins but currently have no representative on the subgroup.
This is in contrast to the main CAWAG meetings which continue every three months and which have a much wider representation and where Pedals for the last two years has had only one representative and not two because of the Helen’s wish to cut down on the numbers of people involved.
Hugh McClintock
Revised 13/01/25