Quangos - Cycling England to get the chop

UpTheWall

http://www.dft.gov.uk/cyclingengland/

These are getting axed int he list of quangos to go.

Didn't know about them until I read that they were going.

Looks like they do some good work encouraging kids to ride, and teaching them to do it properly.

However, if they're responsible for the half-arsed cycle paths we see about town then they should go!

Anyone know more about them?

andrewc3142

Good and effective work. Costs very little. So obviously a candidate for abolition

But in any case of limited interest to the current transport minister, who expresses his love of driving his Jag and appears not to have come across cycling as a means of transport for the future, still less as a way of helping tackle raging obesity in this country, to judge by his recent speech to the Tory Party Conference.

Just a very small part of the demolition of this country currently taking place.

RufusA

I do wonder about schemes such as Bikeability - sounds great on paper and wonderful glossy leaflets, but has it actually delivered on its stated goals.

For example my kids go to a Surrey school. A few years ago the school offered cycle training for free (well you may have had to pay a few quid for a certificate), you had experienced cyclist volunteers a qualified trainer from Surrey CC, teacher helpers and even a guy from the LBS who could help with fettling.

Now Bikeability has eblowed its way in, kids are expected to pay £50 each for training (the PTA funded it this year), the volunteers and LBS have mostly been brushed off, and you get instructors from outside the area who don't know the roads or the kids. Apart from a better badge/certificate; whilst the training is good, I don't think it's any better than before!

Then you read some of the cr@p that Bikeability put out

A breakthrough came with Cycling England and Blue Rubicon applying a supply
chain model to Bikeability. This analysis allowed us to look at the local authorities
and other Bikeability suppliers as retailers and they became our customers. It became
clear that a ‘sales force’ was needed to sell the benefits of Bikeability to these
customers. This also re-enforced the need for more personal relationships to be
developed with customers to understand and work through their issues with the
product.

WTF!

It then becomes clear it's not necessarily about training cyclists, it's about outsourcing training. Local Authorities being sold the idea of getting rid of the instructors they employ to independent training providers, with Bikeability providing the standards, and Cycle England subsidising the increased cost as a sweetner!

The sad thing is that now local authorities have lost all their instructors and p!ssed off most of their volunteers, once Bikeability goes, who is left to train the kids!

All IMHO - Rufus.

Tom Butcher

To be fair I can't see how that many kids could have received that amount of on road training from volunteers. Plus many of these volunteers may have had absolutely no idea.

Would you let some untrained volunteer take your kids out on bikes on the road - I don't think I would. Not saying that all qualified trainers are up to standard but at least there is some level of training and in theory you have to prove you are competent to pass - even though in my experience this must be a pretty low level of competence.