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 21st 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.
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