On Thursday 23rd November, Madison Cycles’ CEO Dom Langan welcomed 34 people from 19 MK’s businesses and education organisations to celebrate the results of this term’s MK Business Cycling Challenge and MK Schools Cycling Challenge.
“It was a pleasure to host the Cycling Citizens MK awards at Madison and to be joined by the Mayor and Lady Mayoress,” said Dom afterwards. “There were some emotional speeches about how cycling has changed their lives and some inspirational speeches about how teaching children to cycle is changing their lives for the better. Milton Keynes is very lucky to have such a motivated group of people promoting cycling for our community.”
After an update on Cycling CitizensMK’s strategy from Malcolm Davies of Trek Bikes and Michael Pattinson of PWC, Cllr Jennifer Wilson-Marklew, Cabinet Member for Sustainability and Action on Climate Change, gave her reflections on the importance of cycling to MK. She pledged to attend a meeting with the Cycling CitizensMK strategy group in the next three months.
Awards were then presented by Mayor & Mayoress Mick & Mandy Legg:
- Top Cycling Secondary School (most students in Year 7 travel survey and most cycles on site per 100 students) – Watling Academy (220 Year 7 students, 12.4 bikes per 100) – collected by Assistant Headteacher Cameron Parks (first picture below).
- Top Cycling Company (biggest increase in cycles on site compared with May23) – The Open University (9%) – collected by the OU’s Jodi Houghton (third picture below)
- Top Cycling Company (most cycles on site per 100 employees) – Gemini Rail Services (7 bicycles)
- Best new cycle parking provision – Unity Place – collected by Nathan Kennard (pictured above)
- Services to Cycling – Ringway Infrastructure Services, for maintaining roads and redways through winter.
Then John Wilkinson of Volkswagen Financial Services spoke about ‘What we have done to increase cycling among our staff’ (pictured below)
and Sarah James from MK City Council spoke about ‘How cycling helps achieve Healthy Workplace Standards’.
Teachers Rich Hill of Bushfield Primary School and Jake Saville of Two Mile Ash School (pictured afterwards below) talked about ‘What we have done to increase cycling among our pupils’,
Simon Rudiger, CEO of MK Christian Foundation/Cycle Saviours, talked about ‘How we help MK access and fix bicycles’ and Mary King gave her personal testimony of e-bike benefit.
Richard Allman & Paul Hammond of MK Council Bikeability talked about routine Bikeability training in primary schools and the upcoming Bikeability Olympics 2024 competition. And Ian Revell, CEO of MK Community Foundation, encouraged people to sign up for Cycling Santas 2023. As well as fun, this will be an opportunity to get pro-cycling pledges from Cllr Zoe Nolan, Cabinet Member for Children & Families: Cllr Emily Darlington, Cabinet Member for Adults, Housing & Healthy Communities; Cllr Marie Bradburn, MK’s Deputy-Mayor; and Dr. Ann Limb, High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire.
Finally Jane Whild of Voices of Women in MK and Ann Shrimpton of Broughton Cycling Group, talked about the importance of including women when planning for cycle promotion in MK.
Then more refreshments were served, courtesy of Madison Cycles.
Photos by Jos Dyer, Madison Cycles.
