23 Jan 24: Placing Public Placemakers

00:01:17 – News from around and about
00:10:05 – Harreit Fisher – at social enterprise Public Practice, on work to support local authorities
00:17:51 – Sylvia Synodinou – on active travel in non-unitary authorities
00:29:10 – Kelly Rodgers – outlining a big safer streets for women project in Manchester

So welcome this evening to active travel Cafe um we’re going to start in just a second with um a news Roundup from all over the UK and what’s been going on in the world of out travel out your travel um and then we will be launching into three presentations all hinged around uh

The amazing Harriet Fisher and public practice but then also learning from syia and Kelly about their experience and their work so we’ve got three wonderful speakers this evening which we’ll get to in just a minute um as Ruth has healthy said it’s often lovely if

Just as I have in my name you popped where you’re from uh one of the things just for our speakers this evening one of and newbies and one of the wonderful things about travel Cafe is we’ve got amazing geographical spread um so you get to hear from all over the UK so

Please do pop your rename yourself so we know where you’re from so that’s the plan um for this evening and so without further Ado I think we might just kick off if anybody would like uh to find out what’s been happening all across the UK on active

Travel who’s got any news to share with the group hands up Adam uh this one’s more uh um National and international um as you may have noticed there was a guardian article about car sizes and how they’re basically increasing by one sentiment every two years um as of yesterday there

Was a study released in America which looked at the height of a bonnet and the death rate of a pedestrian and that was that found that the SUVs in America were twice as likely as their car their compacts as they call them um to basically kill a pedestrian so uh I

Think shape and size of cars is is something that is going to be quite a focus for quite some time um uh so yeah yeah and and then the other one I thought which was quite interesting was more of a conversation in our resident parking permits there are um some

Councils ours is quite bad in terms of you’re allow they use the curb weight maximum curb weight carrying so that would be uh sorry with weighted loow such three and a half tons and your and your vehicle can be up to six meters long which is basically a bus and carry

12 people whereas others are limited them to 5 m by 2 m most Range Rovers for example um and 2 m height as well 2 met wide um so so there maybe some some push back now in terms of not allowing resident permits some some sign very very large vehicles but

That will be by a council by Council basis so it may be worth looking at your resident parking Zone schemes and seeing whether or not they’re being enforced yeah I know this isn’t very it’s not very cycling Centric but is very pedestrian Centric as well um in terms of safety

Etc so anyway that’s that’s that’s my that’s where I’m seeing a theme that’s happening this week around car sizes and the discussions around what their impact their literal impacts on pedestrians BR thanks Adam yeah I saw that too was enraged I bet everybody on the call tonight would happily have a

Big rant about it U because it’s shocking um Gary I just dropped a link in the chat at Medway Council the unit Tre Authority within Kent has just opened uh LC wh consultation um the very briefest of glances at that yesterday there’s some interesting routs in the sense that to

Develop them they will definitely have to tackle uh parking issues in residential areas and of course the concern is that the willpower won’t be there to tackle those parking issues either they will put in new partially segregated or shared use routs and they’ll just get parked over and not

Provide practical solution um so in one sense I may be going back and saying rather than do this can we filter that road somewhere in the middle and uh just create a few lty ends around things but uh interesting that they have stepped up for the

Mark yeah good luck Gary let and make sure you let us know how you get on down there as well um okay age comeing to you in Glasgow Hang on have I got you yet yeah no we we we’re all waiting for the slight technical hurdle and then we’ll know we get you H so are you there move on to Mark and get back to H again I think so the unusually H has only joined on one device which is

Unusual usually it’s two or three just to keep us guessing he’s on two he’s on two he is on two oh there you go um H will come back to you just um switch it off and on again Mark hi yes hi so last week I mentioned

About Valley Gardens um in Brighton be give the go ahead so the headlines this week about neighbors complain about 18 months of misery as Works um are doing and the comment said why can’t they just do this overnight so if you don’t you people don’t want something to happen

And when it does happen they want it to be done and finished yesterday but um so just that’s true probably of every piece of this active travel infrastructure that people are complaining about the actual uh impact when it’s being built and on on a on a related note more

Generally to um transport Bri people may know that on the lower Prim in Brighton which isn’t a an officially a highway it’s a complicated Arrangement legally um they’ve had the Brighton speed trials running for 100 years there was a fatality a few years ago when a

Motorbike flew off at 100 Mil hour the reason that they couldn’t put in um protected cycle infrastructure down though was that you could couldn’t put anything in on that road on that piece of highway or Tomac because it might knock people over and the motorbikes going at 100 miles hour might fly off

They’ve just canceled it because they said the cost of doing health and safety along there is too expensive and obviously people are split between oh God terrible woke stopping cars driving at 100 miles hour in public areas but lots of us are going hooray thank God for that

So that’s our local news brilliant thank you that excellent um Sally should we come to you and then I’ll have another Go Age yeah I just wanted to uh remind people for those who didn’t know that the department for leveling up housing communities has an inquiry into children

Young people in the billt environment which is running at a minute uh and I’ll put the links in the chat but their first um evidence session is tomorrow morning you watch that online and uh they are publishing the responses they’ve had from organizing ations and individuals all over the country uh and

I think it’ll be a really interesting one to follow quite a lot of people um putting in evidence about active travel lack of support for children um in that that kind of respect but also in terms of play and sort of the link between the two brilliant thanks Sally um right H

Okay T there you are fire away got yeah um yeah just a quick up with Adams we had um control parking Zone in our area they marked out the standard Bays which I think ranty will probably tell us 2.5 by 4.8 MERS for a car and um I pointed

Out that when they marked out standard Bays on each side of the road it only left 2.2 meters down the middle and you need at least 2.8 meters to get a truck through so they had to go and burn off that and remark them um but looking at

Also some of the fatals we’ve had um a lot of talk driving a class CDE you need to put your tachograph card in to get to be able to drive it we we’ve had the technology for decades what is stopping us having that on cars and I think we

Should be pushing for rule 28 because a lot of these fatals are going to have inquests and we can get the coronor to ask for a rule 28 to ask how are we going to stop future deaths we are going to fit devices to cars and the more we

Get that coming up as rule 28 the the stronger the argument becomes brilant does that sense yeah certainly does maybe we need to have a think Sally as we discuss future speakers whether we could talk more about that because that sounds really quite interesting yeah and

And the other one that’s I spoke to Mark Hodson about was um platooning which they’re looking at for hgvs and analyzing hgv cyclist crashes usually 32 ton tippers killing cyclists uh it’s always the second driver who kills the cyclist the are driving in Convoy hoben Wigmore Street myland Road and recently

In Oxford it’s the second driver following the lead driver then goes and hits the cyclist I’m interested in examples yeah thanks age that’s really helpful excellent stuff anybody else want to jump in that’s been a good round up and a lovely discussion about trabant in the chat which makes me

Happy brilliant okay right in that case without further Ado what we’re going to do is our speakers tonight so as I said we’re um starting from the point of view of a public practice and organization many of you will know and the work they do and we’re hearing from harri Fischer

Who’s their um Learning and Development manager I think Harry did I get that right um but then hearing from um some of their alumni as well so this will be a really lovely plunge into the world of public practice um so I’m going to hand the floor over to you Harriet and then

After we’ve heard from the three of you we’ll open it up for discussion from the floor fantastic thank you very much Steve and thanks everyone for having us to join you in your active travel Cafe I’ve learned loads already just from reading the chat lots of links to follow

Up on afterwards so thanks very much um really excited to be here tonight and to tell you a bit more about what we do at public practice so I’m just going to share my screen hopefully you can all see that okay great um so yeah just to introduce

Myself my name is Harriet fiser I live in Sheffield I work for public practice we’re headquartered down in London but I work from home in Sheffield most of the week and as Steve said I’m the Learning and Development manager at public practice and what that means is that I

Design and deliver our Learning and Development program which I’ll explain a little bit more about as I explain what we do at public practice so some of you may have heard of us already um but but if you haven’t I’ll just give you a bit of background and then I’m going to hand

Over to Sylvia and then to Kelly who are part of our alumni and actually do the Fantastic work of making better places in local government so I think it’s more interesting to hear from them and their experience of actually doing the work um but I’ll just give you a bit of an

Introduction to get started so public practice are a not for profit social Enterprise we began in 2017 originally grew out of the greater London and Authority initially um but we’ve since expanded our reach and over the last five years we’ve taken on a greater geographical spread and we now work

Across the whole of England and uh what do we do what are we here for well public practice believes that the role of the public sector particularly local government is crucial in creating and managing everyday places that work for everyone and we think that to achieve better places we need a

Public sector that is well well resourced with diverse placemaking skills and has the right support to lead the way but we know that this isn’t always the case the public sector and local government has been struggling in the last decade austerity has hollowed out the amount of money in local

Government in some services for example planning we’ve seen 60% cuts and we’ve seen disproportionately higher levels of cuts in the north of England as well and as funding has been an issue for a number of years now um this has also resulted in a lack of resourcing and so

Resource in local government has now also become a crisis so we see our mission at public practi is rebuilding the skills and capacity in the public sector to help improve places and help communities across all of England just to delve into this in a bit more detail

We did a survey last year of local Authority officers and managers and in that survey of resourcing and skills we found that 78% of local Authority are struggling to attract appropriately qualified or skilled candidates and the top skills that local authorities are struggling to fill or the top uh roles that they’re struggling

To attract to are environmental sustainability digital and data and architecture Urban Design and master planning but you’ll also see on that uh diagram some other really important roles and skills as well infrastructure and utilities and transport and Mobility local authorities also finding it really hard to to find appropriately qualified

And skilled people to do these jobs um and this might be a result from the funding cuts that I spoke about but it also might be the fact that certain topics have risen up the agenda nationally um so for example Net Zero carbon and climate change has resulted

In more councils trying to recruit people with appropriate skills on sustainability and struggling to do so I think the other really interesting thing from the survey is that a lot of officers that responded to our survey who are currently working in local government do not believe that the

Diversity of their team is an accurate reflection of the communities they serve and they feel that the teams they’re working in are made up of people from the same backgrounds and so we think there’s something there about trying to bring a more a wider diversity of people into local government people that have

The same lift experience or come from the same backgrounds as the public that they are serving so we believe that local government has a really crucial role in tackling some of our most complicated challenges um and that public sector workers could have the agency to influence the big

Questions about the longer term future of of our places and of our communities we know that our communities are complex and that we should be taking place-based approaches and bringing together A diversity of skills and experience in order to tackle those issues like housing inequality your climate Justice

We think that by running um by Sorry by working within the system um we can influence some of those decisions and give public sector officers the right tools the right training and the right support to navigate the complexity of the challenge um so we do this by

Running a job placement program it’s a program for mid-career placemaking professionals so that could be Architects ecologists Engineers Urban designers anyone looking for a career change um anyone looking to work in the public sector on placemaking jobs we we recruit them to placemaking roles and we place them into paid placements in

Public sector organizations and in the five years or so that we’ve been running now we’ve placed over 300 people across almost 90 different local authorities as I said we emerged out of the greater London authorities so it’s not surprising that the majority of our placements are in London and the southeast because that’s

Where we were operating ating for the first few years but since 2022 we’ve expanded across the north thanks to funding from the Department of leveling up housing and communities so we are now adding more placements across all of England as I mentioned my role is Learning and Development manager and so

It’s my job to support Associates as they go through the program by delivering a training course um which we call our Learning and Development course where we get together for in-person days online course days and also um a couple of events each year called forums we use

These course days to help build a support network for our associates they go through the program as a cohort um and then they have a lifelong Professional Network that they can draw on for support as they progress through the public sector hopefully choosing to stay in the public sector and continue

To give their skills and experience back to communities um we also so uh use the course days to share best practice and learning um because we have Associates placed around the country there’s a lot of information that gets transferred and shared between different local authorities so it really is a very

Strong Network and a good community of practice for our Associates to join so that was a very very quick run through as to who public practice are and what we do I’m going to stop sharing my screen I can see there’s quite a lot going on in the chat um I think

If it’s okay with you Steve what we’ll do is run straight through to Sylvia and then to Kelly and then maybe take questions at the end is that okay yeah um I’m gonna hand over to Sylvia first I think who’s one of our Alum who’s been through the public practice

Program and can give you a flavor of the sort of work that our Associates have been doing thanks yeah hi everyone um thanks for having me um so yeah I’ll just share my screen but first and then I’ll just start with my introductions is that working for everyone

Y brilliant thank you um yes so uh my name is s no I am the principal Urban designer at Dartford Bar Council um I was placed as part of the Autumn 22 um cohort um and I have to say I joined Dartford um with um largely more kind of

Like Urban Design um based experience as opposed to uh active travel experience but I basically had the uh placemaking Team there and oh sorry one of our remits is to um essentially uh yeah lead on active travel so I don’t know why this keeps Happ but I will move that

Across no still is that working for everyone not yet syia but we can promise none of us will breathe a word about the secret memo we all got to see I don’t even know what I was sharing at that point you you had you had you

Had your presentation up on screen but I think as you went to advance yeah no I’ll try again um or you can walk us through that funding agreement yeah I mean I need to first get my head around it and then um is it now doing the same thing again see

Slides over yeah yeah you can see you see the slides now yeah okay um as in because it on my screen it doesn’t show that is sharing the slides yes if you go to view and full screen mode that should there go yeah perfect um brilliant okay so uh yes so

Very limited uh kind of uh active travel experience but essentially I joined just as we were about to um start working on the final stages of RLC whip so it was a kind of very sudden immersion into active travel um so obviously um I’m sure everyone knows um what active

Travel England uh do and that they were basically um just a couple of years ago uh set up as the government’s executive agency uh for um kind of walking wheeling and cycling um and part of um how the kind of funding Works in terms of How It’s split across um various

Local authorities is that um they’ve uh set up a kind of a rating um map and uh they tend to allocate um more funding to um local authorities that seem to be taking um active travel a bit more seriously so I suppose in some sense if

You are a um non uh unitary local Authority you’re kind of um Bound by what your county um you know level Authority is is how they’re performing in terms of active travel and how much funding they might uh be able to get um so these are some of the kind of

Documents that um Act of travel England have issued over the last few years and obviously quite important to uh read through and and kind of understand so that um obviously any schemes that you’re working on can comply with them uh so that you’ll more likely to get any

Any funding essentially from them uh however yeah as I said the difficulty for um the um sorry I go back one the difficulty for for non-unitary authorities is that again you are bound to uh your County Council where you have to apply for the funding from them so

They get a pop then it gets distributed to the various District councils that they deal with so you you you know really ought to be in a very good position in terms of um your both your policy and um kind of any any schemes that you might want to deal with in

Order to uh have the best possible um outcome for for your kind of funding applications um so as I said uh kind of an LC whip uh local um cycling and walking infrastructure plans uh at active travel England were kind of um uh pushing towards um most local authorities or all local authorities

Eventually having these in place um and obviously having one in place makes uh application for funding a lot more uh likely uh the stages that the the um uh guidance that active travel England issued are basically the determining the scope gathering information Network planning for cycling and walking prioritizing improvements and

Integration and application um and I have to say that we as a local Authority attempted to do this all mostly in house but we we did need assistance with um stages two three and four in terms of um gathering information but also it’s kind of all that that kind of modeling need

To kind of put in place in terms of you know the uh identifying and clustering trip Origins and all of that stuff which we just couldn’t redo inh house um and yes we we then did uh yeah stages five and six internally I have to say it was very timec

Consuming um and I think um so we had another member of Staff kind of primarily dealing on this project but they were just on a fixed term so um they’re no longer at at Dartford but they were extremely thorough in their approach um but what that meant is that

We ended up with a quite a lot of roots um which were mostly uh audited as well so um obviously as you can see that for cycling you need to audit on the basis of directness gradient safety connectivity and comfort um um and then we kind of gave some suggestions on

Potentials for improvement for cycling tried to pick out examples within our bough as well just politically as well as anything else you don’t want to just keep focusing on London um you need to kind of start engaging with what’s in your kind of own environment so that was slightly tricky

Because admittedly dfood is still slightly lagging behind in terms of infrastructure um and then similarly for the network for for walking which is more about zones are supposed to actually specific routs um we were auditing on the basis of attractiveness Comfort directness safety and coherence um and then again some some

Recommendations on on improvements uh I’m sure most of you are aware um in terms of you know kind of the tight radii uh Street narrowing seating provision Etc and definitely Greening um and this was our I know you can’t really see it very much but you can

Definitely find the whole document on on the D website if you’re that interested and we did also create a Google Maps which obviously you can zoom in and out as much as you like and it does actually highlight um our kind of wider um uh corridors a to D um so yeah it’s

Quite quite handy for that um more kind of public engagement um but I would say in terms of uh an overall kind of Lessons Learned From the whole thing is the funding is is really quite important so it’s making sure you’re in constant communication with if

There is an active travel team in your uh you know county level uh if not whoever might be responsible um for uh kind of uh any highways improvements um thankfully Kent do have an active travel team and they are quite well engaged um but I I also have to say that

Especially with um political kind of decisions more recently um we have um had to look elsewhere for funding because um where we thought that we might be able to get some for uh particular improvements obviously that’s um uh currently not yet been made available so it’s just having that

Flexibility in terms of approach uh feasibility studies this is another big one because it’s a kind of chicken and egg situation with the funding but you’ve kind of got to have enough funding at least to do some feasibility studies to have oven ready schemes at various scales um so that when larger

Pots of funding do become available um you can actually um go ahead and um apply for it and hopefully yeah you’re much more likely to to get the funding if you if you have schemes ready and ready to go uh engagement absolutely keeping your local communities um and

You know kind of cycling groups or whatever um up to date and informed uh with the LC whip we’re still always kind of in conversation with our local cycling groups and aware that um you know roots are likely to change or be updated um and I would say

That we are also keeping them up to date because obviously they can also then be applying for um any sales schemes as well especially if they can match match fund um so it’s a kind of like small wins can happen through engagement and then I suppose finally and absolutely very

Importantly is the cross collaboration um with officers both internally uh as well as U at county level but for example it’s been really useful for us to engage with our health teams um because they’ve coming from it from a kind of you know improving uh air quality and getting people more active

Um and reducing obesity and from our perspective it’s the kind of like um kind of the placemaking side of things as well so it’s really good to just try and work together because at the end of the day I think we all want the same

Thing so I’ll kind of uh leave it at that but um yeah I’ll happily take questions uh after Kelly great I’ll um share some slides um and then I make a bit of a start so you let me know if you can see anything coming up yeah that was good

Kelly that’s brilliant um so my name is Kelly I work for GM moving and I I kind of got into that role through uh the public practice program uh so my role is strategic lead for healthy in active places um I come to that with an architectural background uh and really

That role is to provide strategically leadership across greater Manchester to look at how we create places and spaces and see if we can nudge that towards being healthier and more active um and G moving is the active partnership for for greater Manchester but really we have a

More wide reaching uh kind of role within the system which is a another presentation really but um so what I wanted to do is talk through our work on the safer streets initiative uh that we called uh the rights of the streets it’s not my project within the organization

It’s a whole team within our organization and there’s a whole team of Partners uh and collaborators alongside that so I might not have the answer to absolutely every question uh but we do have a very detailed report that I can share the link to um so the funding for

The project came through from uh the home office and we’ve been focusing on an area called Old Trafford and that’s in Greater Manchester in in the Bor of Trafford um so the initiative was focused on oh thinking about going on to the next slide um the in initiative was

Focused on creating safer streets and that’s specifically with a focus on women and girls experience in the area and specifically their ability to to be active uh and we all know that there are barriers that mean that about 68% of women avoid walking alone at night uh we

Know that often when we talk about feelings of safety we end up talking about danger Street lighting police and potentially in these kinds of forums volumes of traffic and speed of traffic um but we think that there are other things to talk about there are other Solutions alongside those kind of really

Important things that I metion mentioned uh so we believe that there is space for Joy belonging and empowerment as well and really that project was really exploring the roles that they they can have um so we took a whole systems approach taking action from um the individual to kind of changing Behavior

Through to policy and kind of the cultural norms layers of that whole system’s approach H and I’ll give an example from a couple of those different layers again there’s a there’s a whole report that I can kind of point you to that that goes into a little bit more detail of each the

Layers um so from that individual uh we facilitated 26 active bystander trainings flooding the area with over 300 people who now have the tools to safely distract or delay acts of harassment as they happen and who are also trained uh to acknowledge what happened and reinforce that that wasn’t

Acceptable um and we know that these kind of small acts um add up over someone’s life and they have a really big effect as they add up um and that that acknowledgement at that time when something is happening is really helpful in being able to process them uh this

Training in particular has already had kind of plenty of ripples throughout the system and we know that tfdm are looking which is transport for great to Manchester are looking to see how they can embed this uh within uh their own kind of Staff training and spread the 5D

Messages which is from the active bystander training uh across some of their kind of information boards and kind of messaging across their system which is great to see that that that’s something that they’re looking at um from the physical environment layer we worked with local community groups um

And open Daya Manchester to to map the area in a series of 23 events uh this provided the insight into how people felt in their neighborhood where they walked where they didn’t how that felt for them what were areas that they they kind of uh avoided um and particularly

Times of day and particularly around the old trft area which you might kind of recognize that name as as being close to the Manchester United uh football stadium which has a huge effect on the area on game days um So within that we kind of took

That Insight uh and that helped to shape some of the way that we that we worked with our community groups with the Community Arts grants um just to see where you know to understand where we might want to make a little bit of an intervention if a mural in some case

Might kind of bring a little bit of joy and a little bit of of kind of lightness to his face and importantly what we were really hearing from the community particularly with that transient kind of football uh fan uh kind of traffic coming through the area is that it it

Felt really important that actually they felt that Community had a presence and that they had um kind some kind of ownership over some of the spaces that felt a little bit more more tricky um and within that there was lots of community groups that we H kind of

Engaged and and kind of were throughout that whole process in terms of the walking and the wheeling and cycling um and then from the policy layer which can sometimes be a little bit tricky to to get into to what what action we might be able to take within

That that layer we looked at legislative theater um so essentially a group of uh kind of local um community members performed a play and that was something that they’ve kind of uh written themselves it described some of the challenges and the issues um that they face um audience members uh interjected

At moments where they thought actually something different might help here we should change something a little bit um and then as we kind of went through the way towards the end we started to to kind of cement what are the kinds of changes that we would like to make

Within the policy that might make a bigger difference um and uh policy makers were kind of in the room there was conversations between those policy makers and the community themselves and there was an agreement to eight commitments that were taken forward by those policy makers one of them being

The active taken taking on board the active bystander training um and we heard just how how empowering that was to feel like there was a sense of of participation and to feel democracy kind of you know sitting a little bit close to you and being able

To have a little bit of an impact on that um and then finally in the cultural layer um so we uh looked at a public campaign that was on social media Instagram Snapchat um as well as H physical Billboards which I’ll take you to the next page you can kind of see an

Example of that physical billboard so that was really targeted at that local area and with the message being there’s there’s no place for it and that on Instagram and if you would like to to find it um and then we just wanted to talk through a couple of the the key

Learnings that we found throughout the whole of the project project is not the right word but I keep keep coming back to it and so one is that being able to articulate the problem has uh impact in La itself so being able to understand why uh you behave in a certain way why

You walk in this way why you cycle or wheel um is is is really important and impactful uh the second second being that when you get involved in this type of work it changes your perspectives and it changes you kind of personally and again that becomes a cyclical kind of uh

Motion that participation makes people feel that they belong that they matter and that they are cared for and that’s something that talking about that legislative theater event came through really really strongly um that that we’re not alone that there is an abundance of action uh

To kind of find and Connect into and we were were really in the area that there are a lot of community groups and kind of really active Community um community members with within that space uh but it was really amazing just to see how much once you start seeking it and start

Looking for it how much you can connect to in through um and that every action has a ripple so we’re starting to kind of Ripple map the the effects of the project just that we can kind of understand what what impact has has been we’ve been able to achieve and but we

Are seeing that those ripples are kind of really uh kind of coming to to fruition it’s great to see that and we also heard about from the community what’s really important to them so a sense of active community that having other people um that care about

You in that space makes you feel a lot safer um and that’s Active Care so active bystanders trusted familiar and with a sense of authority always really helped the experience of participation nurtures that ownership and connection that feminist Street design and planning um is is key with it within that and

That feeling of belonging is something that that was really kind of crave particularly in an area where you have a really kind of transient population coming in and that places are welcoming that they they’re clean they’re green they’re careful there’s stuff to see and do and to feel that you’re engaged in that

Space and uh one of the Legacy pieces that we have from the project is that we’ve created uh some tools to help us to to continue these kinds of conversations across the systems in great to Manchester and Beyond if anybody is interested um so that was

Based on a piece of kind of literature review that’s been informed throughout the project by what we’ve been hearing um from the communities themselves uh and that’s uh kind of culminated in a kind of a workshop tour um that has uh the kind of the issues and the

Challenges that women and girls face alongside other other members of the community some of the case studies that help us feel a bit safer and some tools that help us to work out how we might get to a to a different position um so I really just wanted to

To leave on our last slide which is um that creating change does require conversations uh those conversations can be can be really beautiful um and that our rights to stre streets tool kit can help with with that as well so happy to have any other conversations outside of

This forum if anyone really was interested brilliant thanks thanks Kelly that was excellent thank you Sylvia thank you Harriet um I’m sure we’ve got lots of questions already in the chat um I’m going to kick off straight away though because a couple of us clock tick Kelly

Um you can’t give a presentation from Manchester have the phrase Joy diversion in your presentation explain it so what on Earth is a joy diversion um um it’s more Rose has written it’s essentially a kind of different types of walks and we call them walk recipes and they’re

Essentially what can you see what can you hear and there’s lots of different ways in which you you walk but just experience the place and kind of just notice what that place feels like because a lot of the time you’re just walking to a place and you’re kind of

Not really noticing why you’re behaving in certain ways and so they just help you to to kind of get out of yourself and really experience the walk amazing and one follow up and then please put your hands up people if you want to jump in otherwise I’ll go to the questions

That are in the chat Kelly that last uh that piece of work was very very beautiful um so did you who was the creative team working on it on on what sorry who was the creative team working on that project because all the all of the all of your toolkit and all the

Resources looked really quite lovely ah yes yes we worked with um the publer in London um so they were they were our partner that helped us kind of curate the Rapport and I’ll I’ll put I’ll put a post in the in the in the chat view to

Have a look at but yeah they’re brilliant and super quick great to work with and you know really happy to make it really local and feel really local despite um kind of being local to the area thanks right let’s go to questions um I don’t want to hog it Ruth want to

Jump in I think you had one for Harriet didn’t you oh sorry sorry sorry I couldn’t find myute yes hello absolutely brilliant love both all the presentations thank you so much so my question for Harriet really is um Ruth cab when when she was the co-chair of the APG for cycling

Walking and not Wheeling but it is um did ask whoever then was the transport Minister about funding and would future funding not be drip drip funding because you talked about um lack of staff and we know so many councils don’t keep staff and tfl have a absolute brain drain so

No no young people are going to go into a job waiting for funding on a year-by-year basis so it will active traveling will anybody really really make that a key thing with the next government whichever government it is that we have to have proper guaranteed funding otherwise it’s not going to

Happen yeah I think it’s a really good question I don’t have the answer because I don’t know what any future government is going to decide to do but yeah public practice would like to see um consistent permanent funding for key priorities like transport sustainability um you know climate

Change housing things that are going to make for better places and in order to have a well resourced public sector we need that funding to be there with kind of certainty I think the problem that we’ve had over many years now is the kind of uh competitive funding bids

Through various funding rounds pot starting and finishing it’s very difficult for councils to recruit good people and then to retain them um when that’s the situation so yeah I think perhaps your question was more of a a hope and a speculation it’s not question the endes that that’s what we really

Need to lobby for but thank you yeah yeah I think what I would say is that what we found is that by giving um our Associates the people that we place we call them Associates by giving our Associates a minimum of 12 month placement and many of them are longer

Than that that that gives them a start in the public sector and that they I think we have something like 75% if not higher of our Associates uh stay in the public sector for at least two years after that so it is working but we just need to keep building and growing like

The number of posts and keep people that have highly skilled in the sector and very quickly Steve I’m really sorry reclaim you need to go back to reclaim the night from the 70s and 80s when us women went out and walked in the streets and young people because you know what’s

Happening is everyone hides in a car if they’ve got a car or they don’t go out at all and we need to reclaim the streets in whichever way we possibly can thank you thank you Ruth um right Mark you were really quick you had the first

Question in the chat as well so you’re Keen to come in so we go to you Mark Strong in Brighton thanks well it’s actually uh two questions because it’s Harriet and Sylvia because it’s links the two together so the question I had was about training so we run the in-house training

For sorry the out of house training for the IH insute of high Engineers for active travel training and some of the issues that came up in Sylvia’s presentation came out of that but we’re also being now asked to do in-house training for councils and I was

Wondering about the views of if you do in-house training you only speak to the group of officers at a council whereas if you do a course you get people coming from all over the place consultancy and so on who can then talk to each other

And see what other councils do and I was just wondering if there was a view on both of those and that relates to Sylvia’s point about um a small burough Council doing something that it only ever does once every five years so the the value of developing all those skills

And then youve done it and then it goes away again and and all those skills you developed aren’t going to be used in your Council for another 5 years which is possibly where Consultants come in because you can go around and do that for the neighboring councils so it does

Relate to something that isn’t done very often where you build up a skill set and then you go off and do something else so I don’t know which of you wants to answer but I think it relevant to both your presentations I’ll jump in with a quick

Answer and then see if Sylvia wants to add anything but um I mean I think the second part of your question sort of says what I was going to say really was that for me it’s about knowledge retention um it’s about institutional knowledge and making sure that we don’t

Keep rep having to repeat the training and starting again every time somebody leaves or there’s change in structure um so I don’t think it necessarily matters so much whether it’s an in-house course or everyone goes to a course run by somebody else as long as that when

They’ve done that course they share what they’ve learned as widely as possible and then they record it somewhere and pass it on um so I think that would be much more efficient and also would benefit I mean like Kelly was talking about that ripple effect if everybody

That went on a training course told 10 people about it then actually you’re training 11 people not just one that would be my answer Sylvia I don’t know if there’s anything you want to add I I think I I definitely I agree with all that and I think it’s very that

That um point you made about um making sure you you kind of archive it or kind of just make sure that that that all the information that you’ve collected and and the knowledge you’ve collected is kind of somewhere that others can use um yeah that’s really important I I know

What you mean about us doing it in-house I imagine the decision was made well the decision was made before I was even um in my post but I imagine it was due to financial kind of uh restrictions Etc but um it was a fantastic kind of

Exercise to kind of uh get get uh get done in in house and it’s given um the team that were part of it a very detailed um knowledge of of the B from that perspective so I suppose it’s it’s not kind of all lost and um yeah it’s

Not like we won’t use that knowledge again thanks har thanks Sylvia thanks Mark um so I’m gonna ask a couple of questions from the chat Sylvia we’ll stay with you for a minute then there’s a couple for Kelly and one for Harriet but um the the LC whip process people

Have asked questions about that in the chat and your experience of it um uh H and Glasgow went quite deep in detailed that I’m not going to play that back through because I doubt only 5% of us will understand it um but there was a point of a question about whether the

Process fages major corridors and commuter routes and neglects other sorts of Journeys and schools to to shops and that sort of thing what’s your experience and then just a practical question whether there’s a standardized format that active travel England are working towards that you you may know of

There were those two questions it’d be lovely if you pick up on that all right so on the first uh question I don’t think that um it necessarily favors the kind of busier larger Roots um because of that element within our auditing of um you know safey

For example plays an important role so if it’s a highly busy fast Road uh it’s going to score quite badly on on kind of safety perspective for example so then um I suppose that will hopefully balance out the ideas is uh in terms of of uh Roots identified and and how we

Prioritize those routs um obviously busier roots are likely also to be wider and in terms of retrofit are likely to be um easier funding allowing to actually um do the for gated cycle Lanes Etc uh so it’s a kind of a bit of a mix but I would say that that it’s obviously

Um you you do consider in terms of uh you know trip attractors uh schools uh Leisure centers and all of that so if if those are on quieter streets they will be picked up in the process um and I suppose um on the second question um sorry I’ve gone blank what

Was the second question question stand yeah standardized format oh the standardization yes I wish I wish there was a standard actually U it would have made my life a lot easier when I was um trying to draft the the kind of uh document um but but there seems to be

Different um ways of going ahead with with the kind of LC whip that you publish so some local authorities have just literally uh published much more of the the Baseline and Analysis and haven’t really committed to any uh Roots whatsoever in in the kind of um at least the first iterations that they

Have published so I think it it it can vary vary quite a lot and it also then varies you know politically for example we you know where you stand as a as a local Authority in in terms of what wording you can use ltns 15 minutes you

Know um cities Etc it’s it’s so it will have to to vary I think per per local Authority but I think I suppose it’s a positive and a negative that it’s still flexible enough that that you can probably work um around doing what works best for you brilliant thanks siia so

Very briefly Mark Strong because you eat LC whips for breakfast um you wanted to come back briefly on that before we go to Kelly well I I think what might be useful is actually to have a session on LSC whips rather than rather than talk now but I

Think there are pros and cons the the guidance as I said in the chat was 2017 the world has moved on quite significantly since then um so um but we have to develop an L whip to the guidance otherwise it’s not to the guidance and the guidance focuses on

Corridors corridors are um at say it’s where the most number of people can go and therefore that’s where you you know cus data is is commuting so that’s why it focuses on commuting it’s not intentional necessarily it’s just an accident of the guidance so it doesn’t look at placemaking it doesn’t look at

Anything that’s happened in the last seven years um and and they’re very much the intention of the government at the time and probably now is that every Council should do things differently there should be no one way of doing it um so prioritization for example the DFT

Say you can develop your own priorities so some councils will look at employment some will look at how cheap it is some will look at how undisruptive it is so it’s intentional that they’re all different it’s not an accident brilliant thank you and I’m pretty confident this

Is the only on online Forum where you can say should do LC whips another in the evening and several people nod vigorously just level of geekery on the screens in front of me is terrifying um Adam you got 30 seconds and I’m going to Kelly because we’ve got

Two questions for her uh the question um this is more to do with benefit cost ratio calculations um I’ve noticed with the crsts of the city region sustainable transport settlements programs that DFT are kind of running um we’re beginning some some are getting surprised by developing all these consultations with

The public then they go back to the funding to get it through and at that point the BCR calculations come out scoring very low and I think this also feeds into the LC wit story of something being done in 2017 in a certain way or and in the case of crss programs

2019 um is there is there a problem in communicating you know when you’re discussing with the public and they want to talk about benches and pedestrian Crossings and then you have funds which say no you have to have mode referable traffic reduction must be a resident

Parking Zone that sort of thing is there a pro is there a problem in trying to communicate that to the public or and even to counselors Ward counselors so you’re trying to yeah because they’re desperately trying to get benches in and you’re trying to say no the money won’t

Be able to be used for that does that does that ever become a problem thanks Adam so did you want to pick that up and then I’m conscious harri we’re losing you at six aren’t we so we have one last question for you if that’s all right but

Syia did you want to pick up on Adam’s Point yeah sure and I’m afraid it will have to be the last one from me as well because I will have to head but um I I I I don’t think it’s necessarily a problem from from our perspective at least in

Terms of the LC whip because we’ve tried to keep it fairly flexible in terms of interventions recommended within so we’ve got a range um but they’re not fully like exclusive if that makes sense so if a community felt that a bench um on their street would and they can

Justify that it kind of helps and works within a kind of like the policy overall within that document I think that that at least with with ours it still would would allow for it um I think the problem with the funding is that often it has to be match funded from the local

Community as well so if they don’t have any funds that that that’s where the issues start arising yeah thanks sivia wonderful okay so before you lose you Harry we had one further question which was um I’m not sure whether you picked it up in your presentation but if local

Authorities want to go out connecting with public PR public practice in terms of a placement what’s the sort of process they can go through um just a really practical thing yeah absolutely so we recruit to our program every six months um so we’ve just finished recruiting for the next

Cohort we’ll be opening um expressions of interest for the cohort after that in the summit time the easiest way is just to get in touch via our website so all of the information for for authorities is on the website um you know drop us a line and we can send out some more

Information but yeah there’s a a quite clear process set out on our website that I won’t go into detail here on because not everyone will be interested but um yeah every six months we we take expressions of interest from authorities for any roles that they’re looking to

Fill and we’ll try our best to find you good candidates brilliant thanks Harry and sorry if we had more time I’ll thank you and Sylvia in advance I know you got to Bob off while we’re talking to Kelly but if we had more time I’d love to get

Into the ethos of public service and your view on it uh particularly given Kier starmer’s fascinating speech this this week defending as woke people out there um anyway but thank you so much Kelly C there are a few for you first of all also you need to know that we’ve had

A bit of a stream in the chat with various hilarious jokes about New Order Joy Division Factory Manchester bands it sparked the whole thing so well done yes two questions for you um one is have you connected with Mak space for girls because they’re an organization we’ve

Had on here and they were really fascinating and the second one which was from Sally uh was was have you thought about how you scale up Community engagement so you’ve looked at Old Trafford wasn’t it so well how how how can you scale up the activity that you’ve been working on

Um yeah so for the first question yes we’ve connected with Mak space of girls and there’s lots of other kind of uh bits within a whole movement really that’s that’s happening so there safer Parks guidance coming out of um Leeds and the kind of the West Yorkshire combined Authority um there’s also we’ve

Connected into the University of Manchester and various bits of data and research that’s kind of happening there specifically around women Runners and the experience of wom women Runners um so there’s we’ve been trying to connect as much as possible if there’s any other kind of um suggestions of of people that

We should talk to or connect to really happy to to do that um I think it’s all part of looking at looking at a similar problem but in in in different ways and with different kind of understandings and actually you know across all of those different ways of looking at a

Problem you start to kind of understand where some some commonalities and some common um common Solutions might might sit um which is obviously really useful um for the second question I suppose um this was a real place based approach this was was looking at quite I think it was Paul

Uh uh ssoas um so it was you know a really kind of targeted uh impact that we were trying to have on a on a place um and kind of across all of those layers and I suppose the type of Engagement that we’ be talking about within this setting is is

Different and and some aspects of of that engagement uh would feel quite different because what we were trying to do is create really high quality convers ations about how we feel and it’s about individual capacity and motivation and um you know a range of different things

That that you know all sorts of people got into and it’s worth noting that we didn’t just do these sessions just alone with with women and girls it it was really kind of a crosssection of communities that Focus really helps you to to get to to the the bit that we want

To talk to um I think we we have we have ideas and thoughts about how to scale that and I think the the one thing that I would um kind of point to is that idea of that there is an abundance of action out there and actually once you start

You know we were really lucky that we were able to to kind of get a Community Connector role in and actually that connection into people who work with communities and work with Community groups who know what’s happening and actually putting up leaflets in you know in doctor’s surgeries and in the post

Office and actually really getting into a place is really helpful and that there is an abundance of people to talk to um that I think there there is a flue in in that um and the other thing is you know to upskill others to have this conversation and to have these types of

Conversation and to shift the way that we talk about safety because we’re we’re not really talking about safety when we talk about safety we’re talking about danger and actually let’s talk about what helps us to feel good in a place and you know that’s where we need to keep Shifting the conversation too

Because often when we talk about unsafety it only perpetuates the idea that we should feel unsafe and that’s what it is and what it will always be yeah the question know that doors and that opened up a whole world of discussing Framing and public interventions and behavior change which

We we could pick up and talk about at Great length but David Cox from Birmingham um did ask whether in those conversations that you’ve been having because they’ve had this experience in Birmingham whether you came up against any resistance any threatening behavior any conspiracy theories that have emerged as people who

Discuss sort of 50 minute cities and and stuff like that was it fairly plain sailing or did you find any resistance um no I don’t think so no and I think that’s part of it so when I when I started just my own experience of of having this toolkit and facilitating

Sessions with it I was a bit worried maybe worried is too strong of a word but I was I was wondering what my role in that would be and what that would feel like for me and could I hold that space and this is going to be a difficult conversation and you know

Difficult things that we’re talking about and there were difficult things that we talked about but they were beautiful and actually having that connection with someone else was was great so we actually didn’t come up with all that much and I suppose because it was so positively framed and so

Carefully framed about what it is that we wanted to do I think that encourages you know a positive response and a safe and I think a lot of that is how you set up a conversation and how you kind of explain what we’re all here to do and how you

Know how we want to connect and to do you know brilliant amazing things and um so no well not that much I mean I hate to I hate to turn this back on David but I think it comes down to the people of Manchester being slightly nicer than

Bromm is but you know what can you say but I’m just joking Tim put your hands down no um Paul David said they got mobbed by George Galloway and a gang of people so I think when you do this public engagement stuff it it is a tricky space sometimes but it sounds

Like your Project’s gone really smoothly uh which is really brilliant I’m sure we’ll learn from it hugely I don’t think I’m looking at the screens I’m looking at hands I’m looking at the chat I can’t see any more questions emerging um so we might start to wrap it

Up I think from the chat I think we might um avoid any future uh references to Old Manchester bands because that got is a bit carried away Matthew your joy diversions overseen by New Street order obviously was hilarious but never do that again uh and um it looks like we’re

Going to have to tee up um a dedicated LC whip session um and if we want to go to Peak geek we can do benefit cost rati shows on the back of it um and then all go for a li a lie down in Dart room um

But other than that um I think that was really wonderful Sylvia you’re still with us thank you Kelly pass on our thanks to Harriet again um next week amongst others we’ve got Ramy high womman for you all so we will see you same time next week and same link I

Think that’s everything thanks everybody thanks for another great session take care