BIG INTERVIEW
Sarah Mitchell
LONG-TERM VISION C
ycling UK is the biggest cycling charity in the British Isles with over 70,000 members, and its focus has primarily been to get more people, more
types of people, on bikes, and facilitating the enjoyment of cycling across the nation. Last year, the charity won the BikeBiz Cycle Advocacy
Award for the tireless efforts the staff have put into not only visible changes to things like the Highway Code, but for the behind-the-scenes efforts that have helped to tackle public perception, and for lowering barriers to getting people on bikes.
Several months on from the awards, we spoke to chief
executive Sarah Mitchell, who has been with the charity since 2020, about how it felt to win the award, and what the next steps are for the organisation. “It’s really great to get that recognition for the whole organisation. I think every year we feel like we do a lot of good work on campaigning, and in 2023 it was really nice to have that recognised, both at a national and a local level.
22 | August 2024
Rebecca Bland speaks to Cycling UK chief executive Sarah Mitchell about the charity’s latest efforts to get more people on bikes, winning the BikeBiz Cycle Advocacy Award in 2023, and its first-ever five-year plan
“Obviously we had some big campaigns like the Highway Code campaign, which I think was probably one of the highlights that drove the Advocacy Award in 2023. And that’s the culmination of many people’s works over successive generations of staff at Cycling UK, because it took about 11 years to bring it to fruition. But of course, we also do loads of other great local cycling initiatives. “So I think the award is really nice because it encompasses both of those things and really helps to highlight the fact that we have this great local cycle advocacy network, as well as our big kind of political influencing campaigns. And hopefully it will have encouraged a few more people to join that local network and to volunteer to campaign for cycling locally.” Since the award, the organisation has been working hard on improving diversity, and campaigning to try and reverse the cuts to active travel proposed by the previous government. “We’ve done a lot of work on trying to demonstrate the benefits of cycling to everybody. Obviously, a lot of work has been on combating attempts to create a culture war against
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