County Cycling Officer Function

For many years, West Sussex County Council employed a full-time County Cycling Officer. This meant that there was a useful single point of contact for all cycling issues in the county, and also someone who could coordinate cycling ideas, plans, and schemes, and who could actively look for external sources of funding.

Past officers have been:

• Philip King: 2004 or earlier – May 2007
• Tim Yair: May 2007 – July 2009
• Simone Makepeace: July 2009 – Jan 2012 (although during that time, the post of Cycling Officer was abolished.  Simone continued the work although it was incorporated under a different job title)

Sadly with the budget cuts of 2012 - 2013, the post of Cycling Officer was officially abolished.    A Principal Community Officer was tasked with liaising with Cycle Forums but inevitably, momentum was lost and despite the valiant efforts of the person concerned, the ability to coordinate effort, and engage with the key Council departments, was lost.   Eventually, that person was moved elsewhere and all contact was lost.

Since then there has been no effective coordination of cycling schemes or funding, with the result that at least some money allocated for cycling has been lost.

The problem we have is that cycling schemes are almost always part of the public highway, and so West Sussex County Council, as the highway authority, need to approve and coordinate them. But with no-one at County Highways to do this, cycling schemes get forgotten, and opportunities to use available external funding are lost.