Business and community leaders celebrate cycling

On 26th June, 50 leaders of business, education and community organisations gathered in the garden behind MK City Council Civic Offices to celebrate the growicycling, milton keynes, mayor, business, education, community, councilng momentum to increase cycling in the city.

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The event was one of 15 events in the city's second annual Festival of Cycling, and was introduced by Ian Revell, CEO of MK Community Foundation, which is this year prioritising Transport for vital action.

After a welcome from the co-chairs of Cycling Citizens MK alliance, Ann Shrimpton of The Parks Trust and Simon Rudiger of MK Christian Foundation, MK Mayor Paul Trendall was introduced by Cllr Marie Bradburn, former Mayor and newly appointed Active Travel Champion for the Council. The Mayor spoke about why increasing cycling is important for the city. Then Sam Robinson, CEO of Love to Ride, talked about the overall success of its 'Roll & Stroll' campaign in MK last month.

The Mayor presented the following awards, as follows (photos below in order):

·    Top Cycling Company (overall points)

·       1^st place, MK City Council (2970 pts) – Hayley Roche

·       2^nd place, The Open University (2600 pts); also 1^st place UK company with under 2000 staff – Ross Kearns

·       3^rd place, Network Rail (1360 pts) – Rafal Switaj

·       5^th place, Santander (710 pts) – Claire Kennedy

·       8^th place, ICAEW (50 pts) - Matthew Downton

·    Top Cycling Company (staff participation):

·       5^th place, Volkswagen Financial Services (2.0%) – Mel Welburn

·    Top Cycling Schools (staff participation)

·       1^st place, Cold Harbour Primary School (20.0%) – Sarah Kotulecki

·    Top Non-profit Company (staff participation)

·       1^st place, MK Community Foundation (4.2%) – Ian Revell

·       2^nd place, Canal & River Trust (3.3%) – Lisa Hathway

·       4^th place, Camphill MK (2.0%) – Anke Plummer

·       5^th place, MK YMCA (2.0%) – Allan Blackburn

·    Winning cycling poster designs by animation students

These awards were collected by Gareth Davies, Animation Tutor at MK College, for the following students: Beau Burgess, George Hammond, Jessica Szutowska and Ellis Paul-Thomas. Steve Williams of MK BMX Club spoke about how the club plans to use Ellis Paul-Thomas' image. (See students' designs here.)

Then Bob Pinder of ICAEW announced his company's donation of 25 cycles to MK community groups, following a bike building event as part of ICAEW staff training on 16th June, and presented awards to the winners of the recent primary schools' Bikeability on 23rd June, as follows (photos below):

• Gold winners certificate: Jake Saville, Two Mile Ash School

• Silver winners certificate: Whitehouse School (to be delivered)

• Bronze winners certificate: Jade Jones, Bushfield Primary School.

Representatives of the organisations receiving ICAEW bicycles each said a few words of thanks and explained how the bikes will be used (photos below in order):

·       Cycle Saviours (7 adult bikes) – Stu Macintosh

·       Campbell Park Parish Council (7 women's bikes) – Cllr Jane Whild

·       Camphill MK Communities – Lucy Davies

·       Wheels for Wellbeing (2 tricycles each) – Adam Howard, Activity in the Community CIC, and Frank Purcell, MD, M&M Supplies

Dr Jonathan Flower of University of West England (below) then presented a short summary of the findings of a two-year 'Back to the future' research project, in partnership with The Open University, MK City Council and Cycling Citizens MK. Following the Mayor's Awards presentation, a fuller dissemination of the project was presented to council officers inside Civic Offices (slides here).

Finally, to great applause, MK City Council's Head of Traffic and Transport, Murray Woodburn (above), announced a tripling of funding for improvements to MK's redway infrastructure next year.