Getting Kids on Bikes: How Bikeability aims to Increase Access to Cycles for Generations to Come

This piece first appeared in the May edition of BikeBiz magazine – not subscribed? Get a free subscription.

By Rebecca Bland

According to recent data from National Travel Surveys, one in four children between the ages of 5 and 10 do not have access to their own bicycle. I’m sure many of us reading this, as people who work in the bicycle industry, can remember how important a bike was during our childhoods. Not just for fun and exercise, but for the freedom they gave us to ride to our friends’ houses or to go to school without needing a lift. 

This troubling statistic isn’t necessarily representative of children not enjoying cycling as much as previous generations; it’s just about access to bikes. And without access, children are less likely to show interest or develop what many of us would define as a crucial skill of learning to ride a bike. 

That’s where Bikeability is stepping in with their 2035 plan. Bikeability has long been in schools as an educational programme teaching children how to ride, providing road safety knowledge and giving them the confidence to adopt transport independence. 

I spoke to Emily Cherry, Chief Executive of the Bikeability Trust, about their new strategy and how they plan to improve access to bikes for kids alongside continuing their work in schools.

Taking over in 2020, Cherry hasn’t had the easiest start to her tenure in charge of the Bikeability Trust, but has been instrumental in transforming different facets of the programme. 

“We’ve gone through this big period of transformation and made sure that the product we’ve got out there is as robust and as great as it can be for children in this space. 

“So now it’s time for us to think longer term, what are the big issues that prevent more children and families from being able to take up cycling and active travel as an everyday choice, and transport independence as their first choice?

“And that’s where the strategy has kind of come from. We know that what we’re doing is working, but how do we address some of the other wider issues that sit in and around it?”

Some of those issues include things like access to cycles, but there are also other social factors at play. The cost-of-living crisis for one, with rising costs for parents, but equally, the culture wars we’ve seen in recent years between motorists and cyclists can and does indirectly impact children. 

“The culture wars have had quite a significant impact on parents’ views and fears about allowing their children to go out onto the road. And our new strategy is really about saying we can give children the confidence to cycle. 

“We’re working at scale to make sure that no child leaves primary school without one of our training courses to get out there. We know that parents are much more likely to allow their children to cycle once they’ve come through Bikeability, as their confidence improves in their child’s cycling ability in this space.”

The Bikeability Trust won a BikeBiz Cycle Advocacy Award in 2024 for their work with the Fleet Cycles project. This project helps to provide bicycles to schools to make sure pupils without access to a cycle can still take part in Bikeability, and it remains an aim of the trust to continue to expand this project, but they also want to do more. 

“In 2023, we bought just shy of 1,000 cycles for a quite high number of local authorities to use within training. Those 1,000 bikes were used 16,000 times in that year, which shows the scale of the number of children who didn’t have access to a cycle. But it breaks my heart that I’ve got to take that bike back.”

To tackle the lack of accessibility of cycles for children, Bikeability has identified a few main areas that stop children from getting on bikes. 

“Firstly, Bikeability is not on the curriculum. So if a school says, no, they’re allowed to do so, which often comes down to individual head teacher discretion. We’re in about 80% of primary schools, but like swimming is on the curriculum, cycling should be, too.

“The second big issue is parents’ fears. They’re worried that traffic volumes are too high, it’s too dangerous, and there isn’t enough safe infrastructure. But we’ve got to get positive messages out that actually, Bikeability keeps kids safe.

“The third big issue is instructor capacity. Although we’re about on track and on target with the instructor numbers, we do struggle to recruit. We have a funded bursary, so we pay for the training of instructors. We bought that in 2023, so we’ve removed that barrier.

“And the fourth big issue that stops every child from cycling is access to cycles. And that’s why we’re focused in our new strategy on getting more well-maintained cycles out there into the hands of children so that they can have that ongoing opportunity to cycle.”

From an industry perspective, how can we collectively help to increase access to cycles for more children?

Firstly, we can lobby the government to remove VAT on kids’ bikes. This will help to remove some barriers to cost for parents. Secondly, Bikeability is launching a public fundraising campaign to buy bikes for children who don’t otherwise have access to one. 

“What is on my heart, our trustees hearts, and all of the staff at Bikeability is that if you are a child who lives in care or you are in a low income household, that ongoing opportunity to get that love, joy, freedom and independence from cycling can only come if we do more to give cycles to children who otherwise don’t have access to them.

And that’s why we’re launching a public fundraising appeal. It will be a series of partnerships with the cycling industry to make sure that we can get those cycles out into the hands of children and that they’re theirs, not just something we loan for training.”