The Bikery at Gordon Rural Action

January and February’s weather was not the best for cycling but the Bikery still achieved a lot of positive moves forward with community engagement, encouraging cycling and has also made significant progress in becoming a training and development centre for cycling. Our Training coordinator has completed the training suite and achieved Park Tool School accreditation, one of only 2 in Scotland.

110 Donated Bikes
68 Services and Repairs
7 Free bikes into the community
37 Low-cost bikes sold

The Bikery hosted Nestrans People and Places Programme celebration on 15 March, this was an excellent opportunity to showcase the achievements of the Bikery to date and speak to stakeholders on how we can build for the future.

Social Media – we have a strong presence on Facebook, raising awareness of our services, bringing more people to the shop and generating a lot of sales. A weekly
highlight of Bike of the Week has proved to be immensely successful in selling bikes and increasing servicing to keep bikes moving during what would be considered the ‘off season’.

Active Schools and Young People

• Held free sessions for Scouts, Cubs, Beavers and Guides on bike basics, tailored by age, attendees were given certificates on completion, engaged with 60 young
  people.
• 26 March –Turriff Guides visit, helping 20 Girl Guides gain their “Fix-It” Badge
• We have been working with The Gordon Schools helping young people S1 age upwards to achieve their Dynamic Youth Awards. Currentl y working with 4 young people 2 hours a week on Bike Maintenance Basics.
• We continue to work in partnership with Cyclists Fighting Cancer, a UK charity supporting families undergoing treatment, to supply a family with bikes for their wellbeing.

Accessibility and Inclusion

• Successfully applied for and received funding from The Cycle Fund, administered by Cycling UK, to purchased four eBikes for organised rides. These have been used as a cycle bridge to enable folk to access Greenmyres without using a car and for people wanting to attend led bike rides who didn’t have access to bike and questioned their ability to complete the trail on a traditional bike.
• Our staff from our Community Support Hub have joined the ride to support their mental health and build their cycling confidence commenting, ‘There was a really good atmosphere and it was great for my confidence, I enjoyed spending time with people in the community also learning to ride. I felt very proud of myself after the ride.’
• Working with Huntly Development trust we have been promoting local cycling routes around Huntly and had lots of interest from people picking up the mini maps
• Attended GRA family information day with Trikes and Bikes giving families information on cycling and services available in Huntly and the surrounding areas.

Capacity and Capability

Training Co-Ordinator –Rob – joined team 12th November. He has built a training centre, ensuring H&S compliance, we can now train 8 people at any one time in basic bike maintenance skills. We are delivering free bike owner basics (BOB) maintenance courses to the community. Our courses began in January and have been very well attended with over 50% of attendees being women.

• - ‘Loved the session I attended, really recommend it to anyone who has bikes in their household. Great setting and tutors. Don’t worry about getting a bike to the session, they provide all the tools and there are a few bikes available to work on.’
  - ‘Great Session! Thanks for organising.’
  -  ‘I really enjoyed last week’s session & learned so much.’

Huntly Cycling Collaborative – held another meeting, currently The Bikery, Greenmyres and Aberdeenshire Bothy attended but main agenda point was how to reach out to all cycling interested parties and organisations in Huntly and get them along to an informal quarterly gathering to update on project aims and help pool resource and signpost each other. Lists and contacts being collated. Assisted Bike Bothy into their new container at Greenmyres. We support the Huntly Travel Hub, within Huntly DT, by maintaining their cycles.

Organised rides – developed a strong partnership with the Aberdeenshire Bothy, working with them to develop organised rides in and around Huntly. Have passed Ride Leaders course to support this. Three group rides undertaken, in Ellon and Huntly.

Dr Bikery - Delivered support session in Peterhead working in partnership with Aberdeenshire Bothy. 20 bikes fixed, engaged with 35 people.

Turbo Cross - gave spanner support to a new cycling event in Aberdeenshire in September, fixed 6 bikes and engaged with 110 people.

Stella's Voice

Summary
Our bike numbers to date are:

Bikes received Q4: 518
Since April 2024: 2,514

Bikes donated Q4: 321
Since April 2024: 920

Stella’s Voice have also stripped bikes for parts where they are not economically fixable and some that are beyond any repair have been scrapped (not to landfill). The SUEZ project is going well with 198 bikes collected to since the project went live on 31st December 2024. The volume of bikes received has been steadily increasing and the partnership with SUEZ is working well.

Active Schools and Young People
Building on the success of the Bikes for Christmas project, Stella’s Voice have launched a similar project that isrunning through Easter and into April/early May. This time Stella’s Voice have expanded the offer to more schools and, more crucially, are also working to get this offer rolled out across Aberdeen City. Last time Stella’s Voice donated 200 bikes in two weeks. This time Stella’s Voice are expecting higher numbers. The event in Parliament has been booked for September 2025 and the plan is to build to a Christmas Offer again this year.

Active Workplaces
This project is still waiting on NHS legal to come back to Stella’s Voice - The project with the NHS has not moved forward as the details have to be cleared by the NHS legal team – for internal reasons they have had to send it to the Edinburgh-based NHS legal team and it is in a long queue awaiting their sign off.

Once this has been cleared Stella’s Voice will proceed with the project. Discussions have already taken place with partners about then expanding this project to other work place environments –such as local Councils and large multi-national companies to begin with.

Accessibility and Inclusion
The events that were planned have all been successful. Stella’s Voice have had great engagement across a wide section of the community. Events at RGU saw a lot of engagement from students and staff. The first event in February was good, the next one in March was even better, building on the momentum started with the first event.

Other events in Banchory in partnership with MAGPIE and the pump track in Peterhead were also successful. The first Peterhead pump track event was run completely carbon neutral. Using e-cargo bikes with trailers all the bikes for people to borrow at the track, including the Dr Bike station, spares, tools, etc were all transported to the site.

Capacity and Capability
Stella’s Voice have continued to build and develop working partnerships across the region – we are taking part in the Cycling Festival at the Cycle Hub in Seaton later this month. Their next Peterhead pump track event, Tyred & Cranky are joining to run a Dr Bike station (demand is so high and two stations are needed!). Stella’s Voice are also actively working with Be-Cycle SCIO, helping them with storage, parts and providing bikes for some of their projects, helping them grow their capabilities. Stella’s Voice also have an upcoming meeting with Grampian Inclusive Cycling Bothies and have had a meeting with Cycling Scotland as Stella’s Voice continue to build capacity and capability across the region. Stella’s Voice are also speaking with ALC (All Life Chances) and looking forward to developing a working partnership there.

Angus Cycle Hub

This quarter has seen the largest impact in our role as lead facilitator since establishing the North East Cycle Hub (NECH).
Angus Cycle Hub have undertaken the following key developments:

• re-focussed the partnership on delivering more activity reducing the risk of an NECH “talk-shop”
• opened recruitment into NECH for the first time, recruiting an addition 2x partners bringing the total to 3x who have signed an NECH partnership agreement
• have 11 partners in the process of joining undertaking their partnership agreement process aiming for completion in 2025
• coordinated a unified delivery on behalf of Cycling UK through the delivery of refurbished bikes to their refugee program activity in Westhill supporting the Aberdeenshire Bike Bothy
• established a partnership with NHS Grampian to run a Recycled Bikes for Active Travel offer for employees due to launch in early 2025
• supported a collective buying power on behalf of NECH through our bulk-buying discounts resulting in £31,992.60* of NESTRANS funding saved in the purchase of accessories and equipment (*our trade discount final cost vs RRP saving) - This figure does not include parts and tools resulting in the overall saving to be far greater
• negotiated a Service Level Agreement with SUEZ (waste services provider for Aberdeen City Council) for waste bikes to be coll ected from their site in Hazelhead by Stella’s Voice on behalf of the NECH partnership
• through the facilitation of the SLA with SUEZ, secured regional bike recycling across both Aberdeenshire and Aberdeen City on behalf of NESTRANS, NECH, and our partners

Active Schools and Young People
Angus Cycle Hub have sent their CycleHub.Org Ride, Strive, and Thrive Active Travel Behaviour Change workbook for primary schools to Heads of Education for Aberdeenshire Council and Aberdeen City. The leadership teams have highlighted that this is due to be launched in early 2025 when the schools return.

Active Workplaces
The project pilot for employee referral within NHS Grampian has been developed. Named, Recycled Bikes for Active Travel, Angus Cycle Hub have facil itated all the paperwork and distributed SOPs and data recorders to partners. The lead manager from NHS Grampian indicated that management would look at the partnership agreement to get it signed and the pilot programme is now with their legal department for review before launch in early 2025.

The project has two aims:

• to improve active travel within NHS Grampian staff by reducing financial barriers to owning a bike and
• to gain active travel data via a survey that can better advise the direction and implementation of projects within the NECH.
  The project has an ambition to develop a referral programme for patients of NHS Grampian over the next year.

Accessibility and Inclusion
The NECH has grown its membership to include Stella’s Voice, Magpie, and Camphill School Aberdeen as partners who have signed the partnership agreement. Angus Cycle Hub have contacted a further 11 who are in the process of signing the partnership agreement and are due to join i n 2025. A further 5 are currently not in a position to join but have been offered an opportunity to do so if the NECH aims suit.

As this is the initial recruitment phase for NECH, Angus Cycle Hub have created the following objectives:

• Create an initial organisations of interest list, research potential complementing deliveries/project across Aberdeenshire and City.
• Outreach - Contact organisations who are of interest, discuss ways of which we can work together within the NECH project
• Confirm - Send out partnership agreements for engagement in the project along with some T&C based off of what was spoken about at the i nitial meetings.
• Plan/Implement action - Start ironing out the details of how the partner can collaborate with the project and implement these actions.

In addition to the recruitment of partners, Angus Cycle Hub supported the Aberdeenshire Bike Bothy in their need to enable refugees in Westhill to gain access to safe and free bikes for transportation and learning to ride. More information is outlined in the case study outlined later in this report.

Capacity and Capability
Angus Cycle Hub have developed the first Service Level Agreement of its kind in Aberdeen City for waste bike collections. In partnership with SUEZ, the preferred waste management operator of Aberdeen City Council, CycleHub.Org has facilitated an SLA to collect waste bikes from their site in Hazlehead. With this successful partnership agreement, Angus Cycle Hub have contracted Stella’s Voice to collect on behalf of NECH ensuring a well-structured and seamless delivery of these services. Having established this, CycleHub.Org as the lead facilitator of NECH has ensured that both Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire have SLA’s in place through NECH supporting the collection and refurbishment of bikes. This has been made possible thanks to NESTRANS funding enabling the provision of great capacity building partners and supporting NECH as a network led by CycleHub.Org to develop these opportunities into tangible outcomes.

NECH Road Show: Results from the Jam Jar Vote

Angus Cycle Hub had Jam jars with labels on them at the Road Show events and asked people to put tokens in
the jars that had a statement that they wanted to see the NECH focus on. To date, they got 89 votes. The labels
are:

• Bicycle Repair Kit Library
  ‘I would like to see people have access to bike repair tool kits so they can learn to repair their own/waste bikes.’
• Bike Reuse & Repair Days
  ‘I would like to see the NECH deliver more Dr Bike events, Bike Amnesties and Recycled Bike sales across
  Aberdeenshire and City.’
• Partnership/Collaboration
  ‘I would like to see the NECH gain more members in order to see organisations collaborate to reduce bike waste
  and encourage bike use in the North East.’
• Bike Safety Campaign
  ‘I would like to see the partners of the project have safety equipment (Helmets, Lights and Locks) available for
  people to have for free to encourage safe bike use.’
• Schools, Young People & Workplaces
  ‘I would like to see the NECH engage more with schools, youth groups and workplaces to promote active travel’.

The Bikery at Gordon Rural Action

Whilst it has been winter and therefore off season for cycling, especially in the snow, we have still achieved a lot of positive moves forward. We have recruited 2 new members of staff through the Paths for All funding and have made significant progress in becoming a t raining and development centre for cycling.

• 145 Donated Bikes
• 34 Services and Repairs
• 20 Free bikes into the community
• 42 Low-cost bikes sold
• The Bikery represented as a key speaker at Cycling UK Aberdeen City and Shire showcase event.
• 18/12 Key Speaker at the Paths For all networking event in Glasgow.
• 2x HRC van loads – Alford – the team there are a joy and a pleasure to work with. Their enthusiasm, engagement and bike storage / triage are fantastic.
• Huntly HRC say now they have very few bikes coming to the tip, as people are taking them to The Bikery first – A great result and effort all round.

The first quarter has been dedicated to establishing a strong presence on Facebook, raising awareness of our services, bringing more people to the shop and generating a lot of sales. A weekly highlight of Bike of the Week has proved to be immensely successful in selling bikes. Our Give Back Friday campaign, for Black Friday, was also extremely successful in raising awareness of our services and enabling us to give away a dozen cycles. Facebook campaigns are also generating a lot of cycle donations to The Bikery.

3rd Quarter Facebook stats:

• 2,065 followers
• 368,538 total views Engagement 11.9K + 514%
• Give Back Friday post – 7,879 views

Active Schools and Young People

Development co-ordinator – Matthew – Joined the team on the 15th October so much of the quarter was dedicated to establishing relationships with stakeholders, partners, and service users.

• 1st October – Beavers Visit
• 30th Sept – Cubs Visit

We worked in partnership with Cyclists Fighting Cancer, a UK charity supporting families undergoing treatment, to supply a family with bikes for their wellbeing. A family in Huntly received 4 new bikes via the scheme which we assembled, checked and donated helmets.

The whole of Huntly Nursery came to visit as the pedals on their tricycles had broken to see if we could fix them. Unfortunately,
they are unrepairable, so we are in the process of trying to get them new balance bikes and organise a cycling event day for them in the spring. We have planned cycle activity days with both Huntly and Rhynie nurseries in the spring. This is to act as a bridge to bike-ability and to get the families involved with cycling too.

Robert Gordon University Business school are using The Bikery / GRA as “live” case study and brief for their Search Marketing and Social Media Marketing modules. Presented to 80 students with a great Q&A session after with lots of engagement. Condensed optimised documents from students due in January and May.

Accessibility and Inclusion

• Meeting with the local GPs, we will be partnering with the local GP network for the next round of give-away bikes to identify any adults that don’t have access to a bike who would really benefit to get more active for their health and wellbeing.
• Networks of Wellbeing – established a good relationship with a plan to run joint cycling and yoga events in the spring and summer. NOW run a weekly yoga class in the Linden centre. Our joint plan is for us to lead a ride to a local woodland and to hold an outdoor yoga session there. This will also utilise our funded shared-use cycles.
• Successfully applied for and received funding from The Cycle Fund, administered by Cycling UK, to purchased four ebikes for organised rides. These will also be used as a cycle bridge to enable folk to access Greenmyres without using a car.

Capacity and Capability

Training Co-Ordinator – Rob – joined team 12th November. He has settled into the team quickly and has brought many years of cycling training experience to the role. Public training area being created, additional equipment and tools being purchased, non-assessed public training courses identified, and structure/syllabus being written. ETA delivery of new courses mid-end Jan. SQA training ongoing and will be expanded end Feb. Internal mechanic training sessions done. Workshop audit completed. New workshop mechanic bays created.

• Aberdeenshire Council Work Placement assessment completed and passed.
• Courses completed by team:
  • 1/10 2x Velotech Silver – Toby, Paula
  • 8/11 1X Cycling UK Ride Leader Course - Matthew
  • 12/11 1x Bronze Velotech - Phil
  • 12/11 2x Bosch E-bike training day / certification – Toby, Paula
  • 1/12 2x Velotech Gold – Toby, Paula
  • 8/12 1x Velotech Bronze - Roy

• Collaboration meeting with Outfit Moray and Bike Revolution in Lossiemouth – reciprocal visit to The Bikery in January. Also, Malcolm – Live life Aberdeenshire and Sustrans Anna, The Gordon’s school.
• Huntly Cycling Collaborative – held another meeting, currently The Bikery, Greenmyres and Aberdeenshire Bothy attended but main agenda point was how to reach out to all cycling interested parties and organisations in Huntly and get them along to an informal quarterly gathering to update on project aims and help pool resource and signpost each other. Lists and contacts being collated. Assisted Bike Bothy into their new container at Greenmyres. We support the Huntly Travel Hub, within Huntly DT, by maintaining their cycles.
• Organised rides – developed a strong partnership with the Aberdeenshire Bothy, working with them to develop organised rides in and around Huntly. Have passed Ride Leaders course to support this. Two group rides undertaken, in Ellon and Huntly.
• New volunteer onboarded, gearing up for a volunteer drive in January.
• Shop, we have rearranged the shop to make it more accessible and so it can hold more stock. This will be particularly useful now that the centre room is a dedicated training area. We will build up stock through January to March, enabling us to provide more purchased and free bikes when the sun returns at Easter. We have also created a large wall map of local cycle rides, with free take-away leaflets and a notice board to communicate events.

Stella's Voice

Our bike numbers to date are:
Bikes received
Q3: 536
Since April 2024: 1875

Bikes donated
Q3: 321
Since April 2024: 431

We have also stripped bikes for parts where they are not economically fixable and some that are beyond any repair have been scrapped (not to landfi ll).
After endless meetings and delays (not caused by us), the SUEZ agreement was finally agreed and signed off before Christmas). As of January 2025, we have begun collecting bikes from SUEZ at the Hazelhead site. Informal conversations have already taken place about potentially adding the new Bridge of Don site into this program once it’s constructed and up and running.

Active Schools and Young People
This past quarter saw us launch a project that involved contacting all Schools within our Scottish Parliamentary Boundary. With the co-operation of our MSP, Education officials at the Council and Live Life Active Travel officers, we were able to donate 200 PDI’d bikes with helmets, locks and lights to children identified by the schools who would not be able to get access to a bike for various reasons, so we provided them for Christmas. The project was a resounding success and the feedback from the schools and active travel officers has been overwhelmingly positive. The MSP is in the process of trying to setup a meeting i n Holyrood with all MSP’s so we can present how this project worked and to help them replicate the project across the whole of Scotland.

Active Workplaces
The project with the NHS has not moved forward as the details have to be cleared by the NHS legal team – for internal reasons they have had to send it to the Edinburgh based NHS legal team and it is in a long queue awaiting their sign off. Once this has been cleared we will proceed with the project. Discussions have already taken place with partners about then expanding this project to other work place environments – such as local Councils and large multi-national companies to begin with.

Accessibility and Inclusion
We have several events scheduled for February that are all based around accessibility and inclusion. To date there is an event in Banchory that will be held at MAGPIE, RGU, the new pump track in Peterhead with events at Aberdeen University and Camphill to be confirmed and finalised. Each event will feature Dr. Bike stations where people can bring along their bikes for minor/easy repairs and servicing. There will be a bike amnesty where people can bring bikes they no longer want/use/need and we will also have a range of ‘reused’ bikes available for sale. We will also engage with those who are not able to afford a bike but would like the chance to have one. At the Peterhead site we will also have a bank of BMX style bikes for people to use and try out the pump track and hopefully build confidence and encourage ongoing bike activity after the event takes place.

Capacity and Capability
The ability to deliver 200 bikes in the space of two weeks when the meeting to discuss the project only took place on 22 Nov 2024 aptly demonstrates our capability and capacity. We have worked extremely hard and right down to the very detailed, granular level we have implemented processes and procedures to make things as effective and efficient as possible. This was evidenced in the run up to Christmas when everyone involved expressed how impressed that we were able to deliver, on such a scale in such a short space of time without dropping standards or quality.

Angus Cycle Hub

This quarter has seen the largest impact in our role as lead facilitator since establishing the North East Cycle Hub (NECH).

We have undertaken the following key developments:

• We re-focussed the partnership on delivering more activity reducing the risk of an NECH “talk-shop”
• We opened recruitment into NECH for the first time, recruiting an addition 2x partners bringing the total to 3x who have signed an NECH partnership agreement
• We have 11 partners in the process of joining undertaking their partnership agreement process aiming for completion in 2025
• We coordinated a unified delivery on behalf of Cycling UK through the delivery of refurbished bikes to their refugee program activity in Westhill supporting the Aberdeenshire Bike Bothy
• We established a partnership with NHS Grampian to run a Recycled Bikes for Active Travel offer for employees due to launch in early 2025
• We supported a collective buying power on behalf of NECH through our bulk-buying discounts resulting in £31,992.60* of NESTRANS funding saved in the purchase of accessories and equipment (*our trade discount final cost vs RRP saving) - This figure does not include parts and tools resulting in the overall saving to be far greater
• We negotiated a Service Level Agreement with SUEZ (waste services provider for Aberdeen City Council) for waste bikes to be collected from their site in Hazelhead by Stella’s Voice on behalf of the NECH partnership
• Through the facilitation of the SLA with SUEZ we have secured regional bike recycling across both Aberdeenshire and Aberdeen City on behalf of NESTRANS, NECH, and our partners.

Active Schools and Young People

We have sent our CycleHub.Org Ride, Strive, and Thrive Active Travel Behaviour Change workbook for primary schools to Heads of Education for Aberdeenshire Council and Aberdeen City. The leadership teams have highlighted that this is due to be launched in early 2025 when the schools return.

Active Workplaces
The project pilot for employee referral within NHS Grampian has been developed. Named, Recycled Bikes for Active Travel, we have facilitated all the paperwork and distributed SOPS and data recorders to partners. The lead manager from NHS Grampian indicated that management would look at the partnership agreement to get it signed and the pilot program is now with their legal department for review before launch in early 2025. The project has two aims: to improve active travel within NHS Grampian staff by reducing financial barriers to owning a bike and to gain active travel data via a survey that can better advise the direction and implementation of projects within the NECH. There is also a third ambition which is to develop a referral program for patients of NHS Grampian over the next year.

The NECH has grown its membership to include Stella’s Voice, Magpie, and Camphill School Aberdeen as partners who have signed the partnership agreement. We have contacted a further 11 who are in the process of signing the partnership agreement and are due to join in 2025. A further 5 are currently not in a position to join but have been offered an opportunity to do so if the NECH aims suit.

As this is the initial recruitment phase for NECH, we have created the following objectives:

• Create an initial organisations of interest list, research potential complementing deliveries/project across Aberdeenshire and City.
• Out Reach - Contact organisations who are of interest, discuss ways of which we can work together within the NECH project
• Confirm - Send out partnership agreements for engagement in the project along with some T&C based off of what was spoken about at the initial meetings.
• Plan/Implement action - Start ironing out the details of how the partner can collaborate with the project and implement these actions.
  In addition to the recruitment of partners, we supported the Aberdeenshire Bike Bothy in their need to enable refugees in Wes thill to gain access to safe and free bikes for transportation and learning to ride. Find out more in the case study outlined in the Any Supporting Information section below.

Capacity and Capability
We have developed the first Service Level Agreement of its kind in Aberdeen City for waste bike collections. In partnership with SUEZ, the preferred waste management operator of Aberdeen City Council, CycleHub.Org has facilitated an SLA to collect waste bikes from their site in Hazelhead. With this successful partnership agreement, we have contracted Stella’s Voice to collect on behalf of NECH ensuring a well -structured and seamless delivery of these services. Having established this,CycleHub.Org as the lead facilitator of NECH has ensured that both Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire have SLA’s in place through NECH supporting the collection and refurbishment of bikes. This has been made possible thanks to NESTRANS funding enabling the provision of great capacity building partners and supporting NECH as a network led by CycleHub.Org to develop these opportunities into tangible outcomes.

The Bikery at Gordon Rural Action

• 118 Donated Bikes
• 67 Services and Repairs
• 16 Free bikes into the community
• 64 low-cost bikes sold

Our project coordinator hit the ground running and has been working hard to engage with cycling projects and groups in and around Huntly, expanding our reach and attracting new people. Our mechanic moved on to another position and we have recruited a new mechanic who has already completed her Bronze Velotech and is attending Silver 30 September 1 October along with our coordinator. Thanks to additional funding from Paths for All, we are also recruiting a community engagement mechanic and a training development manager to start in the next quarter.

We have engaged with local recycling centres to collect bikes from Inverurie, Huntly, Macduff and Alford, we now have a system in place for this to occur regularly. We have secured funding to purchase a van in the next few months so this will facilitate this.

We have been working with the Bike Bothy and ran 3 Dr Bikery Sessions over the summer in Huntly and Peterhead engaging with over 40 families and repairing 25 bikes.

We are continuing to work with Huntly District and Development Trust and Greenmyres Adventures to develop a partnership of active travel for Huntly and district area.

Active Schools and Young People
The Bikery is working with the Gordon Schools to provide training opportunities to young people. As an SQA centre we are approved
to provide the following courses:

• Level 2 Cycle Safety and Maintenance
• Level 2 Cycling Safety
• Completion of both level 2 units provides a group award – Cycling Safety
• Level 3 Cycle Safety and Maintenance
• Level 4 Cycle Safety and Maintenance

These courses enable young people to understand how to repair and maintain their bikes and therefore make continued active travel more possible. We are currently recruiting training development manager to help with delivering these courses and help us to become a first-class training centre for cycling. Over the summer we worked with a small number of young peoples to teach them to do repairs to bikes which they were then able to keep for their own use. Ensuring they understood how to maintain and repair their new bike.

The Bikery also works with the local primary schools to ensure all children have access to bikes and safe cycling. We will be doing more work with Bikeability throughout the year.

The project also provides access to free bikes and the Bikery are currently working on 50 bikes with helmets locks and lightsto be given to young people in the community. 37 bikes have been collected so far with a further 13 awaiting collections.

Active Workplaces
GRA and the Bikery are building links with organisations and employers. We have been working with RGU to provide internships and case studies for students to learn about business, marketing and strategy in a practical setting.

The Bikery summer intern helped look at our future strategy and brand management over a 12-week period. She lives in Aberdeen and takes the train into Huntly to attend work, walking long distances to and from the station. The Bikery was able to assist her in her active travel by providing a free recycled bike to enable her to travel around Aberdeen cost free. She was delighted with this.

We are building relationships with local distilleries to provide opportunities for employee give back. A number of members of staff from one distillery attended a litter pick organised by our support services and from this we are hoping for volunteers for people to attend the Bikery. We were also fortunate to have received a donation of 24 nearly new bikes from a project which we intend to turn into a learning fleet. We have also been approached by a large oil and gas company to work with their environmental team to deliver sessions on active travel and bike maintenance and will be organising this in the coming months.

Accessibility and Inclusion
The Bikery’s location in Huntly, a recognised area of deprivation and a rural location, is essential for accessibility and inclusion.

The town of Huntly has struggled with attracting investment and improving the town centre for a number of years and is now actively working to improve this with work on the Bikery, GRA Shop and Advice hub and a number of other shop fronts greatly improving the look if the town. The Bikery building purchase in May 2024 secured the unit and the future of the project for the town and surrounding area helping towards the longer-term improvement plans.

Our proactive involvement of the local schools, anticipating the need for bikes and offering them, as a means of inclusion and participation for Bikeability helps to reduce stigma and encourage cycling as accessible for all.

The Bikery’s role as part of GRA’s wider Community Support Hub is essential for inclusion. The Advice and Support Service assists in identifying those who are excluded from Active travel and refer them to free bike schemes adding to the holistic ‘one stop shop’ impact of the Hub and helping us to meet people who may not normally engage with a cycling project.

The Bikery Workshop and training options also increase accessibility, and we provide volunteering opportunities to people of all backgrounds enabling them to engage and learn at little/no cost. We have volunteers aged from 14 – 70 demonstrating the diverse nature of the opportunities we can provide. This quarter we have had 2 new volunteers join us.

Capacity and Capability
North East Cycle Hub aims to share best practice and learnings between partners to create a streamlined and joined up approach. Aberdeenshire is a large area and it is important to note different communities have different needs so adapting partner projects to meet these is very important.

The Bikery has ambitions for the future including become a centre of excellence for Cycle training, supporting Aberdeenshire's need for more bike mechanics. In order to do this, we need to increase our capacity and capability including the appointment of a learning and development manager and a community engagement mechanic in Q3.

This will enable us to develop tailored learning packages and to increase our engagement with community groups including targeting those who do not normally consider active travel or bike projects as an option for them.

We have recruited a new fulltime mechanic; her appointment fills 2 needs in increasing our workforce but also facilitating our ability to provide courses specifically for women. We have had feedback that women would prefer these to be led by a female instructor, so this appointment allows us to do this.

We are investing in a lot of training for our own team in Q2 and Q3 with volunteers and staff booked onto Bosch courses and Velotech up to Platinum level.

Stella's Voice

The building works is at the final stages (as this is being typed there is a plasterer finishing off some work after the fire door was completed. The external fire stairs are now installed.
Since 1st July we have received 768 bikes (1,337 total since April 2024). 500 of these bikes have been stripped for parts as they were not fixable, only 79 have been scrapped as there was nothing salvageable on them at all. Requests/ donations for bikes is increases month on month. We have several live requests that have come in since the start of October and they range from schools in Aberdeen City,several schools in Peterhead, refugee families in Fraserburgh (request via the Council), children at the Family Centre, refugees in Aberdeen City (referral from another charity). Of course, all the bikes we donate are supplied with helmets, locks and lights.

Active Schools and Young People
We are seeing an increase in engagement with schools – this has been tougher than it has in the past. The main reason for this is not the lack of enthusiasm from the schools, but the lack staff and personnel they can allocate to even coordinate with us is making the process longer. We are actively trying to find ways to help speed this process up and are talking and working on it with Angus Cycle Hub to see if we can increase the speed of engagement. The willingness is there on the schools part, they just don’t have the resources.

Active Workplaces
We are currently in a fresh round of engagement with universities and colleges and have also in the early stages of developing a project with NHS Grampian. There are several strands to this: 1, make all 16,000 NHS Grampian staff aware that they can donate unwanted bikes to us. 2, make the same staff aware they can purchase affordable bikes from us. 3, setup a program for staff identified by the NHS who will be referred to receive a free bike, helmets, locks and lights. 4, develop a model where bikes will be prescribed to patients who maybe live too far off a bus route or, where buses are cancelled all the time and therefore miss appointments, etc. One of the aims of this would be to reduce wasted appointments meaning more people can be seen and hopefully reduce waiting lists, for example.

Accessibility and Inclusion
We work to ensure the message about access to bikes gets to as many places as possible helping to ensure bikes get to those who need them most. The majority of the bikes have been donated to people in situations where they would never have started cycling without the donation of a bike. Recipients range from a refugees, families or individuals in extreme poverty, people who have lived through some sort of trauma and are extremely fragile and are trying to rebuild their life, to people who simply want to get some exercise and a little more active but need help to make that happen.

Capacity and Capability
Our capacity is increasing and growing. We have recently expanded our partnership with Camphill –there will be press releases on this at the end of October but the main things that started our partnership all began with bikes and this is being expanded along with other things. We have also begun a process to expand our partnership with Peterhead Prison. They have had one of their officers on placement with us. He has now qualified for Bronze Velotech and is now working towards his Silver Velotech qualification. He continues to come to us a couple of times a week to develop his skills but the longer term plan is that the prison is going to run its own bike workshop with bikes supplied by us and then the bikes will come back to us having had their PDI (pre-delivery inspection) carried out. This will help with capacity and support as we will need this when we get the SUEZ arrangement in place.

Angus Cycle Hub

The North East Cycle Hub having received the first quarter of monies has begun developing and promoting opportunities to enhance the network. Despite a challenging time, issue due to the delay in funding and the remaining months to deliver such a project, the opportunities to develop a unique and proactive behaviour change portfolio of activities remains ever present. Our strategy revolves around partnership facilitation to enable the success of the wider group, ensure a collective approach to Active Travel projects, support a wider recycling shift to enhance a circular economy, and deliver against community need at the heart of why we do these activities.

Active Schools and Young People
We have been developing a unique program of virtual classroom based resources that have been developed in a bid to enhance and enrich classroom based activity and learning for Active Travel. Having trialled a prototype model in Angus, we are confident that this newly designed CycleHub.org model with the North East Cycle Hub at its heart can be shared across all schools in the region as a model of best practice and a way for schools to engage in a positive and proactive way.
In addition to this, we have rekindled links with Camphill School who are keen to become a member. We recognise that the work they are undertaking across both bike recycling and active travel for young people with additional support needs is second to none and stands as a bastion for success. We are eager to support this and integrate this learning in our collective moving forward to ensure we have an inclusive model for schools, young people, those with Additional Support Needs, and entrepreneurial school estates keen to learn by example.

Active Workplaces
Workplaces is an area we have a very unique opportunity to engage with. We are actively directing any links to local businesses to our NECH members to service so the connections are local and have a direct link into infrastructure nearby. Some incredible examples of workplace integration include initial discussions with NHS Grampian for workplace engagement across the region. This has the potential to increase awareness of NECH, sustain our partners locally with additional workstreams, and enable a huge local employer the opportunity to incorporate active travel modal shift into their strategy moving forward. Alongside this, we have actively been examining connections with HMP Grampian to examine how we develop a strategy for recycling bikes in addition to the already hugely successful work based programs connected there through Stella’s Voice.

Accessibility and Inclusion
We recognise that there is a significant gap in provision locally to ensure a fair and equitable share of resource and opportunity to ensure as many people as possible have the opportunity to integrate active travel into their daily lives. Through the development of a strong partnership forum for which talks and recruitment discussions have already taken place, we are eager to engage with local groups, community organisations, and partners that could support us in a collaborative approach to ensure wider, equitable activity. We are aiming towards recruiting a wide range of partners that see potential in their communities to become active travel ambassadors and who we can support with resource to build this capacity.

Capacity and Capability
In terms of capacity and capability, the keen area of opportunity is the integration into strategy across the local authorities and key local stakeholders. In addition to this, it remains a major area of focus to ensure the Service Level Agreements are at the heart of the discussion and that they are continually renewed once agreed. We have recently been aligned to a bid for Aberdeen City’s and SUEZ’s new site in Dyce. As such, we are eager to take advantage of the collective nature of this proposal to the major funder Zero Waste Scotland and leverage that relationship to ensure a collective approach to bike recycling and the collections from SUEZ sites in the City. Bike recycling is a major success in ensuring a widened capacity and capability in the area as poverty and accessibility to bikes remain a real challenge. With local partners such as Camphill, The Bikery, and Stella’s Voice, this opportunity can be utilised and the outputs from their incredible projects put towards ensuring the people of Aberdeenshire and Aberdeen City can lead active and healthier lives through cycling.