Logo for Sustainable Transport and active travel summit 2023. Includes green circle with Eastbourne Carbon Neutral 2030 and a white cloud with C)2 and an arrow to indicate CO2 levels decreasing
  • The presentations and video recordings for each session are now available below. 
  • Scroll down to see the recordings and slides from each presentation. Or, click a link in the programme to go straight to a specific session. 

Accessibility: 

  • We are aware that many of the slides are not accessible as they contain collages of images, without descriptions.
  • The captions from the video recordings have not yet been checked for accuracy
  • We are providing information from the presentations in a variety of formats and we are working on providing text based transcripts from the presentations, in an accessible format
  • If you would like help accessing any of the content, please contact jill.shacklock@gmail.com

The programme

Chris Todd, Transport Action Network

Morning

09.30 Welcome

  • Stephen Holt, Leader of Eastbourne Borough Council; 
  • Caroline Ansell, MP Eastbourne and Willingdon

Recording from the Welcome presentations:

09.45 Transport & Health

Darrell Gale, Director of Public Health, East Sussex County Council

Professor Scarlett McNally, Orthopaedic Surgeon & Deputy Director, the Centre for peri-operative care  Council

Professor Scarlett McNally has been a Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon at East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust, Eastbourne since 2002. She is also an Honorary Clinical Professor at Brighton and Sussex Medical School and Deputy Director of the Centre for Perioperative Care – trying to improve preparation and pathways for people having surgery. Current President of the Medical Women’s Federation and previously an elected Council member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England (2011-2021, the ninth woman ever). She has an MA in Clinical Education and an MBA in Health Service Management. BMJ columnist, with all articles free at: https://www.bmj.com/search/advanced/mcnally.

She was lead author for the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges’ Exercise the miracle cure, she advocates for more active travel to improve health and reduce pollution. She has published widely and is a highly regarded speaker.

4th Dan Karate black belt, living with myeloma and cardiac amyloidosis, mother of four adult children. Publications at www.scarlettmcnally.co.uk and Twitter @scarlettmcnally.

Recording from the Transport & Health presentations:

10.15 Sustainable Transport - vision & strategy for East Sussex

Jon Wheeler, Infrastructure, Planning & Place, East Sussex County Council

Jon discusses the Local Transport Plan 4 for East Sussex (LPT4): what the plan sets out to achieve and the consultation process, which begins 27th November 2023.

Further info
The consultation for LPT4 is now open until February 25th 2024. Find out more here.

Craig Lamberton, Passenger Transport Team, East Sussex County Council
Craig talks about the Bus Service Improvement Plan (BSIP). East Sussex County Council have been awarded £41m for bus service improvements. They aim to reduce congestion and make a positive contribution to better air quality and decarbonisation.

Recording from the Vision & Strategy session:

10.35 Transport challenges & opportunities in and around Eastbourne, East Sussex

Rt. Hon. Norman Baker, Director for External Affairs Campaign for Better Transport
In his presentation, Norman examines national and local transport schemes, their successes and failures, and recommends actions for East Sussex.

Accessible format: transcript from Norman’s presentation

Chris Todd, Founder and Director, Transport Action Network

In his presentation, Chris outlines some steps we need to take to improve our transport systems and provide opportunities for active travel locally.

 

Norman Baker was the Lib Dem MP for Lewes for 18 years from 1997-2015, and a government minister from 2010 to 2014. For three and a half years he served at the Department for Transport with a portfolio that covered public transport and active travel. He was then promoted to be a deputy to Theresa May in the Home Office as Crime Prevention Minister.

Prior to his parliamentary service, he was the first ever Lib Dem leader of Lewes District Council from 1991 until 1997 and also served as a county councillor for 8 years, and for 16 years as a Glynde and Beddingham parish councillor.

In 2014 he was inducted into the Privy Council.

After leaving Parliament, Norman became managing director of The Big Lemon, an environmentally friendly bus and coach company in Brighton where he won many new contracts for the company and updated the fleet. He is a qualified transport manager. He now acts as Director of External Affairs for the Campaign for Better Transport, is a regular columnist and broadcaster, and undertakes a wide range of consultancy and lecturing work. 

He is a published author of three books, the most recent being the well received And What Do You Do? – What The Royal Family Don’t Want You To Know.

He is also a singer-songwriter and has released three albums and an EP. He hosts three weekly music shows on the local FM radio station, Seahaven FM.

Chris has been a campaigner for over 30 years, in both paid and unpaid roles. His main passion has been campaigning on planning and transport and in the 1990s he helped coordinate South Coast Against Roadbuilding (SCAR), an alliance of groups opposing the proposed Folkestone to Honiton trunk road.

His main passion has been campaigning on planning and transport and in the 1990s he helped coordinate South Coast Against Roadbuilding (SCAR), an alliance of groups opposing the proposed Folkestone to Honiton trunk road.  In 1995 he started campaigning on the South Downs, later working for the South Downs Campaign, a network of over 160 organisations. This coordinated the campaign for a National Park, which was successfully achieved in 2010.

He has been heavily involved in representing the community and voluntary sector and chaired the partnership bidding for the area around Brighton to become a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. This was successfully achieved in 2014 (the first in the UK for over 40 years).  From 2014 – 2019 he was employed by Campaign for Better Transport to support local groups fighting roads and bus cuts.

  

Recording from the Challenges & Opportunities session:

Further information:

Must read: Low Traffic Futures’ guide to influencing Local Transport plans.

11.30 Connected travel, visions & strategies

Patrick Ladbury, Stakeholder & Active Travel Manager, Govia Thameslink

Joel Mitchell, Managing Director, Stagecoach Bus, South East

Kevin Boorman

Recording from the Connected travel session:

11.55 Active Travel - Making it happen

Julia Crear, Head of Projects and Technical Services, Living Streets
Julia’s presentation slides

Further information:

Adrian Berendt, South East Campaign Manager, 20 is plenty for us
Adrian’s presentation slides  

Recording from the Active Travel – making it happen session:

12.20 In conversation with Rupert Clubb

Rupert Clubb is Director of Communities, the Economy and Transport for East Sussex County Council.

Dougal Fleming is an Innovation Advisor for Green Growth at the University of Brighton.

Recording from Rupert Clubb in Conversation:
Apologies for poor sound quality in this recording.

13.00 Designing spaces for active travel

Joanna Yarrow, Chief Impact Officer, Human Nature
Joanna Yarrow has spent her whole career working in sustainability and joined Human Nature in March 2021. In this talk you can find out about the Phoenix Project in Lewes. This is a proposal for an 8 hectare housing development on a brownfield site – a mixed use site with homes, workspaces and community facilities designed around the culture of sharing and designed to enable a shift to active travel.

Afternoon

13.30 Making waves in sustainable transport

FOur men sitting on stage with thier names and pictures on teh big screen behind: Tom Neville, Sam Keam, Tom Druitt, Jim Murray
  • Tom Neville in conversation with
  • Sam Keam, founder of Zedify
  • Tom Druitt, founder of The Big Lemon Buses 
  • Councillor Jim Murray

Tom Neville is a student of Urban Design, Planning & Development at Oxford Brookes University. He is a member of EEAN’s Transport Group  and has been a transport activist since he was 14. Tom established the first Car Free Day, Eastbourne in 2020 and has been running it since then.

Sam Keam cofounded  Zedify in 2018 with Rob King. Zedify is a sustainable delivery service that uses light electric vehicles such as zero-emission cargo bikes, which help cut congestion and create quieter, cleaner and safer streets and more attractive and liveable towns and cities. They have pioneered and normalised the use of hyper-local hubs and zero-emission vehicles for “last mile” delivery within towns and cities. 

Tom Druitt is CEO of The Big Lemon, a Community Interest Company he founded in 2007.The Big Lemon aims to develop friendly, affordable and environmentally-friendly bus services in order to give those without cars the freedom to get around easily and encourage those with cars to use public transport instead in order to help reduce global warming. They originally ran their buses and coaches on recycled cooking oil collected from local restaurants, but they now have a fleet of electric buses.

Jim Murray has been a councillor for Eastbourne Borough since 2010. He spent 10 years as Chair of Planning.  His current council portfolio includes  Cabinet Lead for Climate Change, Eastbourne Water Champion and Councillor for Hampden Park . Jim is a passionate climate change advocate, working with community groups and EBC to: reduce the carbon emissions of the town, improve biodiversity and improve the health and wellbeing of residents of the town.

Transcript from the conversation

Further information:
Watch this video for an insight into how The Big Lemon electrified its fleet.

Recording from Making Waves in Sustainable Transport:

14.00 Improving the public realm & cycling provision in Oxford

Councillor Emily Kerr, Oxford City Council

Recording from Improving the public realm:

14.10 Local progress on cycling & walking

Gem Aellah, Chair of Bespoke

15.30 Feedback from workshops

We are compiling a report from the workshop sessions and will add it here.

15.35 Panel discussion: How do we connect people and places with an integrated low carbon transport system?

  • Chair Lord Ralph Lucas
  • Joel Mitchell, Stagecoach
  • Leigh Palmer, Head of Planning, Eastbourne and Lewes Councils
  • Roddy Crockett, sustrans
  • Andy Murdoch, Buro Happold
  • Christina Ewbank, Eastbourne Chamber of Commerce
  • Gonzalo Alvarez, United Nations Association

Ralph Lucas is an active member of the House of Lords. He has served on committees that addressed digital skills, the regeneration of seaside towns and digital technology & democracy. With his wife, Antonia Lucas, Ralph set up the Making Natural History project, using creative works to highlight environmental issues in and beyond Eastbourne.

16:20 Closing remarks

Caroline Ansell and Stephen Holt

Accessible transcript from closing session

Recording from the Closing Remarks session: