Hayling Island section
Following many years of campaigning by local councils and stakeholders, and having carried out a variety of feasibility studies into various options, Active Travel England awarded Hampshire County Council £600,000 of funding through the Active Travel Fund (round 4) in 2023 to upgrade the northern section of the Hayling Billy Trail (from the Havant Road car park opposite the ‘Applegreen’ garage, southwards to the North Hayling Halt car park on the shore behind the ‘Esso’ garage). This 1.2km section has now been resurfaced so that it can become a truly all-weather, all-year route to give walkers, scooters, cyclists and mobility impaired users a more attractive and safer off-road route.
Separately, covering the remainder of the Trail and the route onward to the beach, a detailed feasibility study has been completed looking at the engineering options for making the Trail a viable part of the Island’s active travel infrastructure. The Council invested £50,000 of CIL funding towards this, together with another £50,000 from the County Council. This also delivered a new path across Sinah Common from Staunton Avenue to the top of the beach, including crossings of Sea Front at Staunton Avenue. Design is now progressing on improvements to Staunton Avenue to make it a more pleasant environment for pedestrians, cyclists and residents alike.
The Hayling Billy Trail has now reopened. Although the work to resurface the northern section of the Trail was completed earlier in February, the RSPB have also been working at the Oysterbeds Nature Reserve, maintaining and protecting the important habitats there, for which they needed to run heavy lorries and other plant along the Trail. It was therefore kept closed until the RSPB had finished.
Work still to do
Although the resurfacing work is structurally complete, the final surface dressing (the same treatment used on the mainland sections of the Trail) is still to be laid. This requires warmer and drier weather and is currently planned to be carried out in May. At this time the Trail will need to be closed again, but only for a few days. Notices will be posted on site and on social media channels to give advance notice of the closure.
Frequently Asked Questions
1) The north end of the Trail covered by the ATF4 money is the best section. Why start there and not on worse sections further south?
The ATF4 funding was on the basis that the project had to be designed and money committed by 31st March 2024. The northern section, being in better condition and having had work carried out previously, is better understood than other sections further south, and there was too much risk to commit to the southern sections being designed in time to meet the government ‘s deadline – the money would have been lost and no improvements at all made.
2) How will this help traffic on the main road (Havant Road, A3023)?
By making the Trail better for active travel (walking, wheeling and cycling), experience from elsewhere shows that people who were put off cycling by the perception of dangerous traffic will start to cycle rather than drive. This in turn reduces traffic for other users, not all of whom will be able (for various reasons) to cycle, wheel or walk. It only takes a relatively small change in the percentage of people moving from car to other modes of travel, to make a real difference to congestion.
3) The Billy Trail is on the west side of the Island. What about links to it from elsewhere on Hayling?
The feasibility studies we carried out on behalf of Hampshire County Council also looked at links to the Billy Trail at various points to help people from the east of the Island access the Trail without going too far out of their way: Victoria Road (near the ‘Esso’ garage), the footpath link from West Lane bends, and at Saltmarsh Lane / Denhill Close (public footpath 521). The latter link now has CIL funding of £33,000 awarded to carry out an upgrade to a wider, all weather surface standard and this is currently being designed with site clearance due in late February and physical building work expected to be carried out later in 2025. This route in particular features as part of route 262 in the Havant LCWIP which is the Hampshire County Council long-term strategy for developing cycle and walking routes in the area.
4) Won’t the Billy Trail be made busier by this work?
The route isn’t being opened to any users who do not currently use the Trail. As a permissive bridleway (which it will remain after the work is complete) the only users allowed on the Trail are walkers, cyclists (including e-bikes), scooters (although this is a matter of legal debate), users of mobility transport such as wheelchairs, and equestrians. The aim of the scheme is to provide all-year, all-weather access for all legal users to this beautiful and valued part of the coast. We hope and intend that the volume of users will increase, but the improved surface and wider path will mitigate this increase. There is plenty of experience from around the country that improvements of this sort only improve the usefulness and attractiveness of the route. Such improvements open up whole areas of the coast to those who previously were unable to use it due to physical impairment or who were put off cycling or walking on the busy main road. This all supports local trade and the tourism industry.
5) Isn’t this just all about allowing more development on Hayling?
Far from it. The ATF4 project as funded by the UK Government is to support the growth of active travel where clear opportunities to do so have been identified, and Hayling being flat and with a strong all-year tourist trade is an ideal candidate. The current funding has been provided to start upgrading the route in stages, so that active travel modes (primarily walking and cycling) can be grown against a background of known user numbers (surveys have been carried out to find out who and how many people use the Trail, and this will be compared with numbers after the works are complete to demonstrate success). The idea that some future funding for upgrades (which may come from developer contributions) in some way encourages development is misleading; the Section 106 (S.106) transport contributions made by developers are independently assessed by the highway authority (Hampshire County Council) on the basis of impact on the highway. All but the smallest developments also pay the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) to Havant Borough Council. CIL may be used as some of the funding for future phases – but as with S.106 contributions, these are used to address known or potential shortfalls in infrastructure (not just roads and paths) resulting from development.
6) Surely the money is better spent repairing worse sections of the Trail further south?
The money awarded so far is capital funding which cannot be used for maintenance. It has been awarded for a specific, time limited construction project on a specific part of the Trail. Maintenance of the rest of the Trail remains the responsibility of Hampshire County Council who, like all public bodies, are struggling with financial pressures including the recent cost increases in materials. As further sections of the project are hopefully awarded funding, any new construction will be to the new higher standard meaning that, once built, not only will the Trail be a more usable and inclusive place, but also the cost of maintenance will be lower.
7) What are the plans for the rest of the Trail?
On Hayling the Trail forms part of National Cycle Network route 2, which continues from Sinah Lane south along Staunton Avenue and then west to the ferry. Staunton Avenue is a relatively narrow straight road which although it has a 30mph speed limit is not conducive to fostering a safe environment for vulnerable road users such as cyclists. We are now developing designs for how the road might be changed to better accommodate active travel, and have carried out surveys of the road and traffic using it. At this stage we are considering the junctions at either end of Staunton Avenue, to see how these can be made safer and improve the ability for pedestrians and cyclists to cross the road and continue from the south end of the Trail onwards to the beach or the ferry. Because Staunton Avenue is public highway, any measures will need to comply with the latest design standards. Public consultation would be carried out if and when funding is available, but at this stage we are just developing deliverable options – one of which is ‘do nothing’.
We don’t know when the rest of the Trail proper will be upgraded to the same standard as that section just completed. The work just finished is intended to be a proof of concept for future phases of upgrades to the Trail, not all of which may be on the same line as the Trail as it is today due to coastal erosion; but funding for this may come from a variety of sources – future government grants (other rounds of ATF perhaps), Section 106 funding levied on developers by the highway authority, and Community Infrastructure Levy are all possibilities. We are hoping that ‘success breeds success’ and that once the first section is done, this will attract more investment for the rest of the Trail.
