photos from Meriden 2017

Meriden Memorial for Cyclists

Today I attended the Meriden Cycling Memorial service. It was a beautiful day and a most beautiful and poignant service. I felt honoured to be there and cherishing the memories of cyclists involvement in conflict. It was also a time to remember a personal loss last year with the passing of my father. This year we had a heartrending reading from a survivor of the Falklands War. He shared his tragic story and his story of bravery and how since his return cycling has been core to his mental health and wellbeing.

There was however a notable absence of a wreath from Cycling UK and I wanted to set out my disappointment that this was the case. In the end it turned out to be a very genuine mix up but I was hugely disappointed so wanted to explain. In previous years  the wreath was ordered locally and national office invoiced.You will be aware that Dave Hearn has very graciously picked up the organisation role - last year at short notice and hereon after the death of the long standing organiser. It is a very significant role organising this event and it didn't transpire until late yesterday that this had been the arrangement and that therefore we would be without a wreath.

This is not to pass blame because actually I feel strongly that there is a really important role for national office in supporting this event. I will be putting discussing the options for support at the next board so please feel free to contact me if you have ideas of your own.

Next years event is in my diary already and I assure you there will be a wreath at this event as I will make sure of it. Indeed I have decided I will stay for the weekend and pick up some cycle routes I travelled many years ago.

It looks like the weather is turning for the better which is good news for Beaumanor so have a great time there or wherever you are cycling next weekend.

Jaki

Vice-Chair Cycling UK

Latest Update From CUK Board

About me

Life continues to be very busy in my role as a Trustee, by now you will be aware that in January I was elected as Vice Chair supporting our new Chair, Dan Howard. For those of you who don't know Dan, he is a life long cyclist with a young family and rides one of the longest adapted bikes I am sure to transit all 4! We have very much enjoyed our partnership so far, we have great respect and pride for our organisation, members and groups and we also have a good combination of skills serving us well.

I have not been on my bike much over the winter but have quite a few rides planned again now, including rides with the Lincoln Women’s Group, led by the fabulous Melanie Carroll. I also rode with and supported a community womens group in Bradford last weekend following directly the wheels of the Tour De Yorkshire for just a few miles to Saltaire. It was really inspirational to join this diverse group, some of whom have been riding together regularly under the guidance of ride leader Mumtaz Khan and others who rode a bike for the first time in years.

I will be at the Meriden Service on the 21^st May and hope to see some of you there. We also have the AGM in London on Saturday.

About us

The last few weeks has been exceptional as Cycling UK increases its impact in line with our objectives. Spring really has sprung and we are gearing up for a busy summer of cycling.

Policy, campaigning, marketing and cycling delivery have all been increasing apace across the whole organisation. To cope with the growth in funding to deliver our plans, Operations has been at full stretch, running a large recruitment drive with 14 new staff joined or joining us over the quarter.

Big Bike Revivial

We have received £1m from DfT for Big Bike Revival and our work with them continues to be impressive.

We have been working in partnership with Living Streets and Sustrans and we are being viewed increasingly as an active travel consortium and are making DfT and other potential stakeholders aware of how we can work with them. We are currently involved in helping co-ordinate the LCWIP process following several meetings with DfT.

Close passing

You may have seen that we supported West Midlands Police’s highly successful close passing education initiative for drivers. Our objective was to fundraise to give a close pass mat to every force in the country. Thanks to Sam Jones and colleagues, we made a Kickstarter video appealing for the £12,000 we needed. The sum was raised in less than two days with wide media coverage.

Cycling Development:

Our Community Clubs programme continues to develop across England and Scotland.  Despite increasing our targets for 2016-17 the team is delivering some amazing results; supporting 42 existing clubs while developing 47 new ones. Across Scotland 81 groups were identified and supported as part of BBR, of which over 40 community groups have been developed and affiliated to Cycling UK over the winter months.

Highlighting one of the new regions for the Community Clubs programme in 2016; BBR funding was matched with health funding in Birmingham.

Our preschool partnership project that exceeded its target to reach 7000 children across Glasgow aims to continue working with families across the city with funding from Glasgow City Council. We are awaiting feedback on our ambitious proposal to roll out Play on Pedals across Scotland; the People’s Post Code Lottery have recently completed an audit of the Glasgow project. An article, co-authored by Professor Chris Oliver, about the programme will be published on the British Journal of Sports Medicine blog shortly.

Membership

We have had some in-depth and challenging discussions about how we achieve our ambitions on membership at the board which is crucial as this is the core of our legacy organisation but also means we are sustainable in the longer term. Matt Malinder has developed detailed plans and we are keeping a very close eye on how these develops as well as putting our support to him and the team.

Dan Howard our new chair and I have discussed the need to improve our own communications with the membership and we will be using every opportunity to do this. If you have any suggestions please let me know.

Our Challenge Rides Series 2017 has 16 rides confirmed, webpage created. Logo designed and medals, certificates and event kits are available to support events. The Series has now been officially launched and we have some great events in there from our East Midlands Groups.

The Women’s Festival of Cycling launched on 8 March. It was publicised in BikeBiz and also had offer of support from Casquette magazine. We are encouraging groups and officers to add as many as possible on www.cyclinguk.org/womensfestivalofcycling .

Bike Week 2017 will take place 10-18th June (Parliamentary Bike Ride 7th June). The 2017 theme will be based around ‘fun, freedom and friends’ and will form part of the Big Bike Revival summer programme. Halfords are a corporate partner along with Immediate media.

Julie Rand has surveyed all group publicity content page (on the Cycling UK website) and contacted all groups regarding their publicity pages to ask if they can add photos and other information. Many have done so. If you have not already done so you may want to contact Julie to review.  Informal groups will also be added to the listings so they can take charge of their own publicity pages too and also register events.

Our new Cycling UK clothing range will be available soon, which will be sold through the commerce function of our new website. The range will include:

           Cycling UK Jersey 


           Cycling UK Shell Jacket 


           Cycling UK Cycling Cap 


           Cycling UK Casual T-shirts 


           Cyclists’ Touring Club Wool Jersey 


           Cycling UK Car Window Stickers 


Campaigning

We had great success on our campaign fighting the Governments plans to raise the minimum value of a road crash injury before its victim can claim injury compensation, from £1,000 to £5,000. Cycling UK mobilised 6,000 responses to the consultation, arguing that this would disproportionately affect cyclists’ and pedestrians’ claims, even though whiplash claims by these groups are virtually unheard-of.3.2 Marketing materials.

That’s all for now, we are entering the best months to be on our bikes. Enjoy.