Dr Alison Hill Blog: The Bikeability Trust’s Vision For 2025

To celebrate National Trustee Week, this week’s blog post is written by our Chair of Trustees, Dr Alison Hill:

“As the Chair of Trustees for the Bikeability Trust, I am immensely proud to contribute to the development of the Bikeability cycle training programme. As we face a public health and climate crisis, cycling has to a huge role to play in our future. Learning how to cycle is a rite of passage for all, and the Bikeability Trust has an essential role to ensure everyone has the confidence to cycle. It has been so rewarding to be part of the Trust and see how our journey has contributed to this vision.

Trustees are vital and the structure of the Board is key to support our Executive Team to achieve our mission and vision. Over the past few weeks, we’ve reviewed our Board structure and recruited a small number of Board positions focussed on diversity and the skills gaps we identified. Seeing the commitment and interest from potential candidates who have a genuine desire to help the Trust to grow was humbling. We will announce our new appointments shortly.

This week is National Trustee Week, which gives me the opportunity to reflect and thank the trustees for everything they bring and do to support the Trust. Emily Cherry, our new Executive Director who was appointed earlier this year, has brought fresh energy to the team with a new vision and direction. With the Prime Minister’s Gear Change programme, we can really grasp this opportunity to embed quality cycle training and put Bikeability at the forefront of that.

As a major role of trustees is to set strategic direction, I am delighted to share that the Board has agreed a new vision and set of strategic goals for the Trust, designed to take us to 2025.

 

Our Vision is that The Bikeability Trust will ensure everyone has the confidence to cycle and enjoy this skill for life.

The Trust is aiming to make Bikeability the leading programme for cycle training by ensuring:

• Child focussed: We deliver cycle training to both children and adults, but the majority of delivery is helping children learn the life skill of cycling
• Quality: Our Instructors deliver high-quality, consistent cycle training across England
• Inclusivity: We take action to reduce barriers to participation and ensure that anyone who wishes to access Bikeability cycle training is able to
• Efficiency: Our delivery programme offers value for money and is delivered in an economic and efficient way
• Influence: We share our evidence of the impact of cycle training across a variety of sectors (transport, education, environment, health, leisure, etc)
• Collaboration: We work with stakeholders, partners and commercial organisations to achieve our vision and ensure Bikeability is a household name

 

2025 Strategic Goals

At the Bikeability Trust, we are an ambitious force for change. We are creating a movement to ensure everyone can access cycling as a life skill. We provide the leading cycle training programme in England.

In 5 years, the Bikeability Trust will have helped more than 5 million children take up Bikeability cycle training. We will have also offered thousands more families and adults the chance to take up cycle training. We will achieve this through our 5 strategic goals. We will have:

1. Secured the funding to offer a Bikeability for All programme
2. Ensured high quality delivery of Bikeability for All
3. Secured partnerships that give more children the opportunity to take up Bikeability by removing barriers to cycling and learning this life skill
4. Encouraged more children and adults to cycle more confidently, more often
5. Demonstrated the impact of cycle training for improved road safety, improved urban mobility, education curriculum importance, individual health and wellbeing, cleaner air and the environment

Together, by 2025, we can help 5 million children cycle more confidently, more often – but we can only do this with your support. The Bikeability Trust is more than the central staff and Board. Our grant recipients, training providers, instructors and partners are vital in helping us reach and, I hope, exceed our vision. We can only fulfil our mission if we keep working together to help Bikeability for All become a reality by 2025.”

 

Dr Alison Hill