B4H Public Statement – 5th March 2024 

It is with great sadness and regret that after almost 10 years of getting #morepeopleonbikes and making people #bikehappy Bike4Health is ceasing all operations.  

Regrettably, this means that all of our cycling activities, hire and workshop work will stop with almost immediate effect. For those workshop customers who currently have bikes in our workshop we will be in touch directly about getting your bike back to you with the minimum of fuss.  

Please bear in mind this is a difficult time for us and adversely impacts all of us. There is never a good time to do this but that time is today, Tuesday 5th March 2024. 

It is not the fault of our staff so please bear with us as we try and minimise the inconvenience to you whilst knowing we have just lost our jobs.  

Thanks to all our customers over the years, in cycling, workshop and most recently hire, we are genuinely gutted that we can’t continue to support all of your cycling endeavours, but the wind has definitely been against us for a little while now and the forecast doesn’t look any calmer.  

We are all aware of the rising costs of living meanwhile the rising costs of running a small purpose led community focussed business is also an unavoidable and unfortunate reality. Escalating energy prices, fuel prices, insurance costs and the costs of job creation with 14 full time members of staff all mount up to a complex and unsustainable financial and management burden. 

Since 2014 we have been helping anyone and everyone in trying to achieve their cycling goals from learn2ride to adapted cycling, from trikes to TT bikes, from school cycling days out to multi day trips to Holland and Italy. 

Post Covid we expanded our mechanical support of everyday cycling with investment in our Benton workshop and our staff of mechanics, qualifying them to the highest national standards. Meanwhile we gradually built back the cycling activities in schools which has taken longer than hoped and now faces increasing budget challenges forcing schools to make difficult decisions. 

All the while we have worked with councils to support their various cycling activities and programmes but again budget constraints make things difficult even in a policy positive Active Travel world.  

We have worked on some exciting projects, that could have been and maybe transformative, but the gears are far too big and the wheels grind far too slowly for a small organisation like ours and we have been in the wind taking it for others for far too long.  

Trying to change gear and make the breaks joining the dots and making connections between and for national and local government and nongovernmental organisations who should all be working together anyway, is hard work. 

Working with large organisations with budgets to spend rather than the day to day pressure of revenue generation, that seem happy to spend on their own running costs but with absolutely no urgency to deliver on activities has just worn us out. 

So we tried, tried really hard for a long time, to make positive changes through cycling. 

Since 2019 we have ridden with 6994 riders, completed over 85 542 Miles (or 3.5 times around the Earth), supported over 3506 customers through the workshop and qualified five apprentices.  Unfortunately, this has come at a personal cost we can no longer accept. We accept that even with our supporters – you know who you are and we thank you – we cannot change the world on our own. Perhaps we should have realised this earlier and stayed in the group. 

Thank you and all the best in your cycling. 

Dave and Richard.

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