FEATURE
with, nowhere to store a bike, and not being able to afford an adaptive bike are eliminated when accessing a hub. To the charity, long-term success means helping people make cycling part of their lifestyle, beyond the hubs. And for Wheels for All, it’s not only about the participant, it’s the carer, it’s the friend or family member “they play a pivotal role in going back to the care home or the GP surgery or the hospital and say, I’ve just found a cycle that will work for you. Come on, we’ll go and cycle next week. And we have this across the country. And so there is this momentum, you know, and it’s a really good momentum that hubs are assets for that local community. We want them to be open more often, and if there aren’t any hubs in that area, we want to create that hub,” said Ian. Wheels for All currently have 28 hubs across the country, but thanks to recent investment from Sport England, they’ve begun work on bringing together a national network of providers and through research, have identified an inclusive cycling landscape, pinpointing 164 places throughout the UK that offer inclusive cycling opportunities and are now working out how they can help those places adhere to a shared set of standards.
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Through their work, they’ve built good relationships with manufacturers of adaptive cycles and had an impact on things like design based on feedback from riders, as well as introducing products to their community. But what they offer extends beyond riding, and for those who want to be involved in hubs, they offer training and mentorship. They’d like to have more industry involvement, putting out a call to action for those who may be interested in ways they can support the charity and its work. Another current project is the development of toolkits for engagement, but they are looking for wider industry support, “so whether the cycle industry could invest or bring forward any kind of workforce that can help with that toolkit to help with language and training techniques so that everyone can be comfortable with being active with people of all different abilities who perhaps have never had to do so in the past. “I think there’s an opportunity to bring in more
volunteers and anybody working in the cycle industry to connect with our local hubs. So that would be a really impactful thing if out of this we could get organisations who are readers of Bikebiz to come along to their local
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