History
2001-2006 | The start of our journey
The UK Local Authority School Travel Forum (UKLAST) was formed in 2001/2 before the Travel To School Initiative to connect authorities linked to practices in school travel. Following the announcement of the TTSI in 2004, UKLAST membership grew rapidly, and the forum began to deliver services to its members including an AGM, national awards and a best practice sharing website.
2007-2011 | Supporting school journeys
In 2007, UKLAST changed its name to Modeshift and the next year Modeshift delivered its first accreditation scheme for school travel plans (called STAR). Towards the end of the TTSI, many authorities lost their School Travel Advisor post and 2011 the Modeshift board decided to undergo a full restructure and took a new approach to increase membership numbers.
2012-2016 | Supporting more journeys
At the beginning of 2012, Modeshift had grown from a management board of six to ten members. The board presented a new membership offer to authorities and partnering organisations, including a refurbished website, regional meetings, and a free convention. In that same year, Modeshift and secured a grant of 9.5k from Awards for All to revamp the National STAR accreditation scheme and make it an online system. Modeshift then re-launched the scheme as STARS to authorities outside of London.
In 2014, Modeshift applied to the Department for Transport to run the Prime Ministers school travel awards. At the 2014 AGM in Birmingham, Baroness Kramer announced that the DfT had awarded Modeshift 184k to run the National School Travel Awards through is STARS scheme. Part of the grant meant that Modeshift could employ a member of staff to run the STARS scheme. In 2015 Modeshift launched its new STARSfor system for workplaces with plans to create a new rating scheme in 2017. The management board team grew to 13 members and Modeshift were able to recruit a STARS officer as part of a successful Access Fund bid with Living Streets.
2016 - 2020 | Growth of accreditation
In 2016 Modeshift created a new brand for its STARSfor rating scheme and continued to expand the scheme to more Local Authorities. The first National School Travel Awards school of the year award presentation took place at the Portcullis House in Westminster and the scheme expanded to over 750 schools. In 2017, the STARS for rating scheme was fully launched and began to expand to authorities and organisations across England
2020-2024 | New members and audiences
As we all faced the tragic and challenging consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, Modeshift continued to offer services to its members and STARS users. Modeshift STARS would become one scheme, uniting its Education, Business and Communities scheme in a new system. We achieved our highest ever member numbers (108 LAs of 152) and retained all of our partner and supporters. In 2022, Modeshift launched its Active Travel Ambassador (ATA) scheme and made the acquisition of ACT-Travelwise and its services including Travelwise week. In 2024, Modeshift began to roll out services to the events and venue sector and STARS was launched to NHS Healthcare settings. The end of 2024 saw the delivery of our two-day Convention and awards in Leeds, surpassing 350 delegates for the first time to bring closure on another successful year.
Today
Our work continues to unite sustainable practitioners across the country under our banner ‘Team Modeshift’. Our membership base continues to expand and we have plans to take our STARS programme from strength to strength and our ATA programme, now in its third year is continuing to grow across the UK.
