Following many years of campaigning by local councils and stakeholders, and having carried out a variety of feasibility studies into various options, we are pleased to announce that Active Travel England has awarded Hampshire County Council £600,000 of funding through the Active Travel Fund (round 4) to upgrade the northern section of the Hayling Billy Trail (from the car park opposite the ‘Applegreen’ garage, southwards to the car park on the shore behind the ‘Esso’ garage). This 1.2km section will be 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. This section of work is currently on site, and is expected to be complete in February 2025. This page will be used as the project ‘home page’ so keep coming back regularly for updates and news.
Separately, covering the remainder of the Trail and the route onward to the beach, we have completed a detailed feasibility study, 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.
Works have started! This means that parts of the Trail are closed. Please refer to Hampshire County Council's poster for more information.
Newsletters are being put together to keep you updated on the project and how it is progressing:
Updates will be provided on this page as they happen.
Thank you to all who attended the engagement events in November 2023. The comments and observations you made are now being fed back to the design team and included within the Design Reports submitted to the funding clients. Most of the comments made are addressed in the FAQs below and we have added a few at the end of this page for those newly raised.
£600,000 from Active Travel England (Active Travel Fund round 4 – ‘ATF4’), £50,000 Hampshire County Council NCN2 study, £50,000 Havant Borough Council Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL).
The £600,000 of ATF4 funding has to be committed for implementation by 31st March 2024. This was successfully achieved with the Project Appraisal being approved on 15th January. The remaining funds are to produce a feasibility design for the rest of the Trail, which was delivered in spring 2024. We have spent some of the CIL funding upgrading the footpath link across the Sinah Common Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) between the south end of Staunton Avenue and the beach, and adding crossing points to that new path across Sea Front at the south end of Staunton Avenue.
Work on the ATF4 section, 1.2km between the ‘Applegreen’ garage car park and the Victoria Road car park (rear of ‘Esso’ on Havant Road) starts on 21st October 2024 and is likely to run until February 2025, although site preparation starts 11th October. There are no dates for works on the remainder of the Trail yet.
The ATF4 funding is on the basis that the money has to be 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.
Staunton Avenue is part of NCN2 (the National Cycle Network route along the south coast, linking Kent and Cornwall) and so is part of the route funded by the feasibility design work commissioned from Hampshire County Council. It is a straight, fast road which is not conducive to fostering a safe environment for vulnerable road users. Part of the commission is therefore to develop designs for how the road might be changed to accommodate active travel, and for this we need accurate surveys of the road and traffic using it. There is no funding yet to do any physical works, and because it is a highway scheme 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’.
The design we have produced has now been submitted to the County Council for approval, and consists of an all-weather, asphalt-based surface. The surface will be no narrower than it is at present, and in most places wider. The finished Trail is intended to look similar to the section of the Trail on the mainland. This is an asphalt base with a surface dressing of New Milton washed gravel which oftens the colour whilst providing a good sealed surface.
The short and honest answer is – we don’t know. The ATF4 design and implementation is intended to be a proof of concept for all future phases of the Trail, 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.
By making the Trail better for active travel (walking, scooting and cycling) experience from elsewhere shows that people who were maybe 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 who will be able (for various reasons) to cycle, scoot 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.
The feasibility designs 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 expected to be carried out 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.
During the construction period of the ATF4 scheme, starting 21st October 2024, it will be necessary to close the Trail north of Victoria Road car park for safety reasons as there will be large items of construction plant, along with lorries delivering materials. Most of the car park at North Hayling Halt will also be closed as this is required for storage, delivery and welfare. The project is expected to run until February 2025.
Site clearance along the old route of West Lane (which used to run up to the shore before the railway was built in the 1860s) has been carried out so that surveys can be made of the level of the ground and the condition of the old road which has been hidden under overgrowth since its closure. This will also help us to identify any work needed to trees along the route. The intention is that this route would offer an alternative route for the Billy Trail around a section south of Knotts Marsh which is regularly affected by flooding and blockage by shingle washing up onto the Trail from the beach. There is no funding to build this section yet, but we want the designs prepared so that in the event of further funding being awarded, we’re ready.
Where the existing Trail is being resurfaced we will provide some on-site information – posters have already been erected at either end of the ATF4 section. We held two engagement events on 15th and 22nd November, and some of the FAQs on this page are in response to comments and feedback made at those events. On the alternative route proposed at West Lane, this would need planning permission and that offers opportunities for more formal feedback. For the sections on the highway at the south end of the route, we’d offer a public meeting nearer the time, perhaps at the Community centre, but this is a way off yet. All updates will initially be provided on this web page, and in the local press including Hayling Herald.
The route isn’t being opened to any users who do not currently use the Trail. It is not being opened to electric cars for example. 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 aids 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.
Far from it. The ATF4 project is funded by the UK Government to support the growth of active travel where clear opportunities to do so have been identified, and Hayling being flat and with a strong tourist impact 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 not voluntary and 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 not voluntary and are used to address known or potential shortfalls in infrastructure (not just roads and paths) resulting from the development.
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 a higher standard than exists at present 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.