Cycle use and the distance travelled by bicycle are set to fall from 2015 despite hundreds of millions of pounds of investment and the increasing popularity of cycling in the main cities, according to official forecasts.

Campaigners and academics seized on the data, revealed in Parliament by the Transport Minister, to call into question the prediction models used by the Department for Transport (DfT). They said that the predictions appeared to ignore the rising use of bicycles and claimed that the data would be used as justification for cuts in funding.

Annual cycle trips are forecast to rise from 1.2 billion in 2010 to 1.4 billion in 2015 but fall back to 1.3 billion in 2020 and remain at that level until 2030. The annual