Over the past couple of months, millions of people have re-discovered the benefits of cycling and walking.
This has probably been a busy period for your business and we are thankful for the hard work you have been doing to keep the country moving.
We now want to capitalise on this shift and position our recovery plans to deliver against our goals to improve air quality, decarbonise transport and support more active forms of travel. As part of this effort, the Energy Saving Trust have set up the Fix Your Bike Voucher Scheme to help people in England get their bikes repaired.
The scheme will be delivered by the Energy Saving Trust on our behalf, and we are now asking businesses wishing to participate in the scheme to register online at https://fixyourbikevoucherscheme.est.org.uk/
You are encouraged to familiarise yourselves with the terms and conditions and guidance document, which are available on the application website, along with a guide setting out how the end-to-end process will work. The scheme will be launched for customer applications shortly– we will notify registered businesses when this goes live.
We know the demand for repairs is high and we want to ensure this further boost is manageable and is helping to get unused bikes repaired and into use. For this reason, vouchers will be released gradually to avoid a spike in demand for repairs that cannot be met, and so that we can monitor the impact the scheme is having on-bike use and the delivery of its objectives.
To inform the best rate of release of vouchers we are also looking to collect some information about the current status of the bike repair market. We have prepared a simple questionnaire with a small number of questions; can I encourage you to complete this as it will help us refine our approach and run a scheme that works for both customers and participating businesses. The survey can be accessed here.
We look forward to seeing many of you participating in the scheme. Should you have any queries, please do contact fixyourbike@est.org.uk.