Another week, and another failure by the Conservative-run County Council to support active travel.

Two months ago, the county council submitted unambitious and flawed plans for active travel in parts of Oxfordshire.

They didn’t read the instructions properly and, as a result, were given only half the money they had applied for in the first tranche of the Government’s active travel funding.

In doing so they had ignored the views of local councillors, the various councils’ cycling champions and the many active cycling groups in our area.

Well, as far as my constituency is concerned, they’ve now failed again.

Despite many positive suggestions of active travel schemes from local county, district, town and parish councillors, they have not applied for investment for any active travel schemes in Abingdon, Botley or anywhere else in my constituency.

Even the long-standing and well-planned Eynsham to Botley Community Path hasn’t been supported, despite having previously had its proposed funding withdrawn by the very same county council.

I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised.

For a long time now, it has been very clear that whilst the county council has good policies to support active travel on paper, it nearly always fails to actually deliver on those policies in practice.

After the failure with the tranche 1 funding, i wrote to county council Leader Ian Hudspeth asking for an assurance that local councillors and local cycling groups would be fully involved in the tranche 2 bid, that our community would be listened to.

Once again it seems that local councillors’ input has been ignored.

There is huge potential, as we emerge from Covid-19, to get people to switch to more active travel. We have seen a huge rise in walking and cycling during the pandemic, with many people enjoying the benefits of lower traffic levels and being at home more.

More active travel is better for the environment, better for people’s physical and mental health and will save costs at every level of government in the long run.

The county council, working with others, has a prime opportunity to embed that trend if it acts positively and takes an innovative and inclusive approach now.

I will continue to push for this, but, sadly, all the signs are that they are going to miss this golden opportunity once again.