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OPINION

No laughing matter: Shell UK, British Cycling and Active Travel England

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April Fool’s jokes aside, the rows over petrochemical giant’s involvement come at a bad time for both organisations

By now, you’ll have hopefully realised that our piece this morning about Shell offering discounts on fuel to British Cycling members was of course an April Fool’s joke.

It was inspired by the backlash created by the governing body’s announcement last October that the petrochemicals giant had signed up as its lead partner, more than two years after banking group HSBC announced that it would be ending its sponsorship of the organisation four years early.

We explained at the time why the hole that the early termination of HSBC’s backing had left in British Cycling’s finances combined with the impact of COVID-19 meant that the governing body may have had little choice in agreeing to partner with a company that would inevitably prompt the accusations of ‘greenwashing’ that are levelled at organisations operating within industries that are damaging to the environment whenever they engage in sponsorship of the arts or sport.

> British Cycling and Shell: How HSBC pulling plug and COVID-19 hit governing body’s finances

But while our spoof was being written, the story took on a new twist with the revelation late last week that Shell UK’s chairman, David Bunch, had joined Active Travel England (ATE) as a non-executive member.

> “Greenwashing, pure and simple” - fury as Shell UK sponsors British Cycling

Again, the news was greeted with dismay by many cycling campaigners, and moreover comes at a time when, as outlined below, promised funding for active travel initiatives for England outside London has been slashed, the political will from the very top of government to support such schemes has all but evaporated, and a large section of the media has redoubled its attacks on cyclists.

ATE chair Chris Boardman defended Bunch’s appointment, telling road.cc that the body had deliberately appointed board members from outside the active travel arena, explaining that “If we want to give an entire country access to active travel as part of a genuinely sustainable transport system, we need to think bigger than we ever have before.”

He added: “I want our work to be guided by people who have delivered national scale infrastructure, are comfortable speaking to power, and are used to working on a massive scale. Anyone who knows me can vouch for the fact I’m all about the outcome and I’m delighted to have David on my team to help us deliver a step change in active travel.”

That’s all well and good. One doesn’t rise to the position Bunch has within a leading multinational business without having the skills that Boardman outlined, but the fact remains that the appointment would likely have passed largely unnoticed had that business not been Shell.

According to his biography on the ATE website, in his role at Shell UK Bunch “is tasked with driving the net zero agenda and supporting an orderly energy transition.”

Shell’s commitment to net zero has in the past been called into question, however – last year, the Guardian reported that the multinational, which publicly says it is committed to achieving net zero by 2050, had told its employees in an internal memo circulated in 2020 not to “imply, suggest, or leave it open for possible misinterpretation that (net zero) is a Shell goal or target.”

So you can perhaps forgive people for viewing his joining the ATE board – alongside other non-executive members including West Midlands Mayor Andy Street and Isabelle Clement, CEO of the charity Wheels for Wellbeing – with a degree of cynicism.

Budget cuts and No 10 changes put brakes on progress

While both Shell UK’s partnership with British Cycling and its chairman’s appointment to ATE’s board would always have attracted criticism from environmental and active travel groups, developments over the past six months or so have put the brakes on the slow progress that was being made in promoting cycling and walking as a means of getting around.

Until January last year, when Boris Johnson’s government announced the creation of ATE, there had been no national body with responsibility for cycling since 2010, when Eric Pickles unceremoniously tossed Cycling England onto the coalition government’s so-called Bonfire of the Quangos.

The body reportedly cost £200,000 a year to run, operating with a skeleton staff, and in its final year allocated £60 million in funding to local authorities outside London, as well as co-ordinating Bikeability training across the country.

So when, 12 months ago, the creation of a new national body to take responsibility for a promised £2 billion of funding over five years for walking and cycling initiatives was announced, there were hopes that finally we had a government serious about encouraging active travel, and one that was prepared to put its money where its mouth was.

Moreover, ATE had at its helm Chris Boardman, whom many saw as the natural candidate for the cycling champion role recommended by the 2013 Get Britain Cycling Report published in 2013 by the All Party Parliamentary Cycling Group, and whose eloquent, well-reasoned arguments for why walking and cycling should be the default for short trips have won him plenty of fans.

It helped that Johnson was a Prime Minister who ‘got’ cycling, and who during his time as Mayor of London came to understand, with the help of Andrew Gilligan whom he appointed as the city’s first cycling commissioner, that painted cycle lanes did not offer adequate protection and that physical segregation from motor vehicles was the way forward, pushing through the capital’s two major cross-city routes despite significant opposition, not least from his own party.

And the legacy of Johnson’s time at City Hall is also reflected in two of the appointments to ATE’s board. CEO Danny Williams, who first came to prominence through his Cyclists in the City blog, was a member of the Mayor of London’s Roads Task Force, while expert advisor Isabel Dedring, engineering consultancy Arup’s Global Transport Leader, had served as Deputy Mayor for Transport and Deputy Chair of Transport for London under the Johnson administration. 

A stick in the spokes

But even as ATE was continuing to recruit staff and moving into its headquarters in York, two things happened in quick succession that threw a stick into the spokes of the fledgling organisation.

The first was Johnson’s departure from Number 10. During the Tory leadership election last August, supporters of both Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss insisted their candidates supported promoting active travel, but it was clear neither was likely to embrace it with the same enthusiasm as the outgoing Prime Minister.

Then, during Truss’s brief Premiership, came Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s disastrous ‘fiscal event’ which led to the Bank of England having to commit emergency funding to prevent the collapse of pension funds, as well as the cost of government borrowing soaring, the reported £70 billion hit to the economy made it inevitable that a new age of austerity would be ushered in.

Now lacking the political patronage it had previously enjoyed from the very top under Johnson, money set aside for active travel was always likely to be too tempting to resist when the Treasury was looking for areas in which to save money – but even so, the scale of the reduction announced ahead of Jeremy Hunt’s Budget last month came as a shock.

At the same time, the right-wing media has launched a renewed attack on cycling and active travel more generally, with hardly a week going by without articles – often based on the flimsiest of ‘evidence’ – criticising spending on infrastructure or efforts to curb car use and make our towns and cities more liveable, or accusing people who ride bikes of ignoring traffic laws.

And with active travel and initiatives to reduce motor traffic now co-opted into the so-called ‘culture wars’ by a vocal minority, some of whose more extreme members will think nothing of setting fire to planters restricting access to streets within low-traffic neighbourhoods or vandalising the CCTV cameras used to enforce them, there is a strong possibility that many local authorities will cave into pressure and water down their plans in this area or even abandon them altogether.

So, little more than a year on from its establishment, ATE’s task appears infinitely harder than it did then, with that much-reduced budget as well as the evaporation of the political buy-in essential to helping it fully realise its vision. 

Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.

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13 comments

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Rich_cb | 11 months ago
3 likes

Simon is still plugging his alternative facts re the economy.

The BoE made billions of profits on the lending mechanism it arranged after the Kwarteng budget. Long term borrowing costs are no different now to what they were before that budget. Neither is the cause of the spending cuts. This was pointed out last time the same 'facts' were rolled out.

As an aside, if the cycling media and 'cycling twitter' in general attack a major company that comes forward to sponsor cycling then don't cry too many tears when cycling events and teams start folding due to lack of sponsorship.

PR departments will have looked at the fuss made by the likes of road.cc about Shell and decided cycling is not worth the potential hassle.

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mark1a replied to Rich_cb | 11 months ago
4 likes

Rich_cb wrote:

Simon is still plugging his alternative facts re the economy. The BoE made billions of profits on the lending mechanism it arranged after the Kwarteng budget. Long term borrowing costs are no different now to what they were before that budget. Neither is the cause of the spending cuts. This was pointed out last time the same 'facts' were rolled out. As an aside, if the cycling media and 'cycling twitter' in general attack a major company that comes forward to sponsor cycling then don't cry too many tears when cycling events and teams start folding due to lack of sponsorship. PR departments will have looked at the fuss made by the likes of road.cc about Shell and decided cycling is not worth the potential hassle.

True ref BoE, as reported by The Guardian...

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jan/12/bank-of-england-complete...

I would imagine it's difficult for companies with large sponsorship/PR budgets to consider cycling at the moment, with the internet crying "sportswashing" at anything to do with the motor industry, banking, petrochemicals, anything, etc. 

I'd be surprised if Ford hang around with RideLondon-Essex long term, I can see why they wanted to get involved, historically one of the largest employers in Essex but the backlash has not been what they wanted I expect.

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chrisonabike replied to Rich_cb | 11 months ago
2 likes

I'm sure road.cc (and the like) will be surprised to learn that they wield so much influence.

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Rich_cb replied to chrisonabike | 11 months ago
2 likes

I imagine if you wanted to monitor how well your cycling sponsorship was going the cycling media would be one of the first places you'd check.

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HarrogateSpa replied to Rich_cb | 11 months ago
7 likes

Keeping a habitable climate on Earth is important. In relative terms, sponsorship of cycling teams is not.

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Rich_cb replied to HarrogateSpa | 11 months ago
1 like

That is true but I'm not sure that Shell's sponsorship of cycling will have much of an impact on the climate either.

As an aside did you read the analysis of global population trends and the potential impact on climate change published recently? If they're right it should make it much easier to maintain that liveable planet. It was really interesting, well worth a read.

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Jetmans Dad replied to HarrogateSpa | 11 months ago
0 likes

HarrogateSpa wrote:

Keeping a habitable climate on Earth is important. In relative terms, sponsorship of cycling teams is not.

Both of which are true, neither of which are necessarily relevant. 

I am just tired of seeing people calling for the big oil companies to do their bit and take a lead on promoting and assisting active travel and the switch away from fossil fuels, and then when they make some steps to do that (however small they might be) seeing those same people constantly question their motives and accuse them of greenwashing. 

We can't call on them to change their ways if we are not prepared to allow them to do so. 

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Claire87 replied to Rich_cb | 11 months ago
1 like

If Ford or Shell want to bring funding to the sport great.   Bring it on! Why not? I see and read a lot of hate but I think Limitless is great and frankly I don't really care where the money comes from and these companies seem to be trying to change, particularly when the government is pulling funding from everything!   Chris has a hard enough job and it's just wrong to second guess his decisions when it comes to the sport or active travel - he has certainly earned that.  I've worked in governement agencies, decisions aren't made lightly and aren't paid so I'd really like to see a bit more openness to see the positives for people that are trying to make a difference and willing to give their time.  If we carry on with all this suspicion and anger the funding will dry up - and as far as Im concerned that would be a huge loss....

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TheBillder replied to Rich_cb | 11 months ago
2 likes
Rich_cb wrote:

. Long term borrowing costs are no different now to what they were before that budget.

Is that assertion backed by anything? 10 year gilt yields seem to have been 2% last summer, peaked at over 4% (hence doubling the cost of borrowing) and are about 3.5% now according to the charts here: https://markets.ft.com/data/bonds/tearsheet/summary?s=UK10YG

Have I missed some excellent news?

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Rich_cb replied to TheBillder | 11 months ago
3 likes

Gilt yields are rising because interest rates are rising.

After Kwarteng's budget they spiked far higher (easy to see on your link), if that level had been maintained it would have added significantly to the government's borrowing costs. As it was they soon returned to the levels seen before the budget meaning that there is no long term difference in government borrowing costs as a result of Kwarteng's budget and consequently the budget cannot be blamed for recent spending cuts.

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ShutTheFrontDawes | 11 months ago
2 likes

Bunch may well be qualified for the role. But he's not the only one qualified for the role; plenty of other people tick the boxes Boardman lists. The question we should be asking is: why was Bunch selected for the role over other candidates? And why is Bunch interested in the role in the first place?

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chrisonabike | 11 months ago
3 likes

Good article albeit bleak news. Especially for any optimists who might have thought we were nearing the "end of the beginning" and had reached the actual start of serious consideration of active travel. Cycling - including use of all kinds of mobility devices - being the most efficient and capable part of that.

Sadly it does look like it was Johnson's personal interest in cycling combined with his rampant self-interest and lack of concern about the views of others which permitted this to get going. The last two of course being qualities which made him a troubling choice as a leader. Not that any others are likely to be self-effacing martyrs but BJ was noteworthy in a strong international field...

The Scottish Parliament did manage to allocate 10% of the transport budget for active travel.
Although where that gets spent is contested. I'm not seeing parties nationally seeing the potential to save overall and get lots of positives by spending what is comparatively peanuts on active travel. It seems this is seen as a "nice to have" or even an indulgence for a minority which should be the first thing cut when money's tight (when is it not?). Apart from maybe the Greens?

I retain some optimism because of the many advantages of cycling. There's also been slight growth of this in eg. London and the fact that it's cheap (relative to motoring) means it can grow in straightened times.

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hawkinspeter | 11 months ago
3 likes

Hmmmm, seems to me like active travel isn't going to be properly promoted until we can get a major culture change in the UK. I can't see either Tories or Labour making it a priority and instead will more likely use the so-called culture war to try to win over the thought-challenged people.

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