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Bravo! Hurrah for the Government! Not a sentiment oft expressed chez Styring, but credit where credit's due.

Ruth Kelly has made an auspicious start as Secretary of State for Transport - she has announced a record £140m for cycling.

It is to be given to Cycling England to spend on cycle training for 500,000 children over three years.

Cycle training is the best way to spend money on cycling. You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink. You can install all the cycling infrastructure you like, but you won't fill the cycle paths if people can't cycle properly or are scared to try.

Most cycling infrastructure - cycle lanes and off-road paths - makes cycling palatable to novices and the very young or old. They can make life much pleasanter for experienced cyclists as well.

But no experienced cyclist really needs all that infrastructure - they just need a safe on-road environment.

The best way to spend money on cycling is to get cyclists and would-be cyclists trained with the skills they'll need to deal with any situation on the road.

The Government devised a new national standard for cycle training last year. It's called Bikeability. Any cyclist, child or adult, who has completed the new Bikeability scheme, is capable of cycling on any road bar motorways.

Bikeability is the key to getting more cyclists on their bikes and out of their (parents') cars.

In Oxfordshire, the council offers limited cycle training in about half its primary schools, but for the other half of primary schoolkids, as well as anyone of secondary age or adults, there is no training - until now, that is.

Cyclox, the cycling campaign for Oxford, recognises the importance of cycle training and is looking at Cycling England funding to supply Bikeability training across the county.

Training programmes will launch this spring. Find out more at contact@cyclox.org or on 07792 375423.

The Government has several motives in splashing out. Promoting cycling means more cyclists, which leads to reduced congestion, improved air quality and a healthier population.

It can be no coincidence that Nice (the National Institute for Clinical Excellence - the people who approve the NHS's drugs) has just recommended that pedestrians and cyclists be given priority in planning and building towns and cities.

The Nice recommendations include restricting motor access, the reallocation of road space, road-user charging and the creation of comprehensive walking and cycling networks.

Nice believes this will help prevent and manage more than 20 conditions, including coronary heart disease, diabetes, cancer, obesity and mental health problems. So there you have it - cycling keeps you sane as well as fit.

The Government must now back these recommendations with hard cash so that local authorities have no excuse for not making our towns and cities the monuments to cycling that currently only Caroline Lucas and Boris Johnson talk about.

6:37pm Wednesday 30th January 2008

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