October update

A Cycle to School Week special 

It’s been a wet start to the school year, which didn’t bode especially well for Cycle to School Week, but I’m so pleased to say it completely exceeded all my expectations! 

We had 163,003 pledges, including from 807 individuals and 542 schools, an increase on last year by a huge amount! We hope this will continue to grow over the coming years and that we will be able to have a truly inspiring, landmark week that celebrates cycling as a viable transport option, to school and beyond! 

Visits from Secretary of State, MPs and more! 

During the week we were excited to welcome the Secretary of State for Transport Louise Haigh to join some Bikeability training in action in Preston. She was joined by Chris Boardman from Active Travel England (ATE). It was a fantastic session, with Haigh saying on X “Learning to cycle confidently and safely is so important, and it was great to hear so much enthusiasm from a new generation of cyclists.”  

ATE put together a lovely film following the visit, which you can watch here. 

"We want every child to be able to feel safe and confident in being able to cycle to school"@LouHaigh and @Chris_Boardman visited children in Preston to watch their @BikeabilityUK training session this #CycleToSchoolWeek 🚲 pic.twitter.com/MzIVvkxWz1

— Active Travel England (@activetraveleng) September 27, 2024

We also had lots of visits from MPs, including Fleur Anderson, Wera Hobhouse, Jess Brown-Fuller, Pippa Heylings, Andrew Weston, Maya Ellis, Andrew Cooper, Mims Davies, Joe Powell, Vikki Slade, Zoe Franklin and Alistair Strathern. The Lord Mayor of Stoke-on-Trent Lyn Sharpe also made a visit.  

Thank you to all the training providers and instructors who helped facilitate these visits – without your support, skills and enthusiasm for Bikeability and cycling, we wouldn’t have been able to show so many members of parliament how fantastic it is! 

Cycling to school in the press 

In addition to the visits, we also got lots of attention for Cycle to School Week in the press. We appeared in lots of local press including in the Essex Magazine, Chester’s Dee Radio, the Solihull Observer, Eye on Southport, and a BBC West Midlands radio interview.

Thank you to Head Teacher Emma Baxter from Elms Farm Community Primary School in Birmingham for her time and willingness to get involved. She spoke to BBC Radio WM and helped to show that schools love having Bikeability training and really see the benefits for their pupils. You can listen to the interview here, (from timestamps 1:45 and 2:27). 

We also appeared on Newsround, with presenter De-Graft joining a bike bus with children and parents on their cycle to school. It was a fantastic piece, and I was delighted to be the resident ‘cycling safety expert’ and provide some top tips on how to cycle safely and confidently on the road. You can watch the full piece here. 

Another huge thank you 

I know I’ve said it multiple times, but I don’t think I can repeat enough how grateful we are to have the support of all of you who help make Bikeability the gold standard in cycle training. As you know we are still working very hard behind the scenes to ensure we get the funding we need (more on that below), and engagement from MPs and the industry in events like this can only strengthen our case! 

Now we just need to keep pushing forward until every week is Cycle to School Week! 

Funding Beyond 2025 

Bikeability, as all publicly funded programmes, is waiting for the announcements from the Autumn Budget, with the statement being made on the 30 October. This will be a 12 month extension of funding to April 2026.  

It also does not mean we will get confirmation of Bikeability funding by the 1 November. The 30 October budget sets overall department spending levels and then there is a period of negotiating what programmes can be funded. We have submitted a proposal to ATE, the Department for Transport and Her Majesty’s Treasury to maintain the 24/25 funding levels. We are now putting together the submission for the full spending review in the Spring that will set a further 2+2 years funding. This means we cant tell you anything about future funding until we have confirmation, I promise we are pushing hard to get confirmation as soon as we can!