Community Investment

Community Interest Company (CIC): profits go to the community not to private individuals

We want to tell you a bit more about the ways in which we give back to our community. This makes us different from most bike shops, and we hope it motivates you to support us and your community.

Bike Drop Academy

We train people to get well-paid work in the bike and e-bike industry. We set up our first training workshop in January 2020, and now employ one of the graduates as a full time mechanic.

We have a new, separate, fully equipped training workshop with a formal 18 month apprenticeship based training scheme, leading to cytech (internationally recognised) qualifications.

We think this is crucial to the future of bikes and cycling.

Recycling Bikes

  • We are delighted to received donations of bikes at the workshop.

    Any bike, Any day

    If you’d like to give a bike a new lease of life, and start it on its journey back to full functionality, bring it to us.

    If its unusable as a whole we will salvage as many parts as we can use to build up another bike

  • All our bikes have been professionally refurbished and lovingly restored.

    Fully serviced, repaired and ready to ride.

    Every bike in our shop has been donated by the community, assessed in the same way as a customer bike, fully safety checked and serviced, repaired, parts replaced as required, cleaned , lubricated and test ridden before heading to the shop.

    They all come with a 3 month workmanship guarantee.

    From mountain to road bikes, modern to vintage, we get a wide range of bicycles come through our workshop, so do check back regularly to see what's available.

    Whether you're looking for a comfy commuter or an adventurous off-roader, we hope you find your perfect ride!

    Check out our dedicated refurbished bike shop page.

    We stock:

    kids

    adult bikes,

    road bikes

    MTBs

    gravel bikes

    and commuter/hybrid bikes

  • We are now an approved Velorim recycling collection point for bike tyres and tubes.

    Rather than these items ending up in landfill we can now direct them to a recycling process.

    Please bring any tyres or tubes to us and support this process, we pass on the cost we incur for sending items into the system (£1 for a tyre 50p for a tube), and also add this to the price of a new tyre or tube purchased from us, where we will recycle the used one for you (just the same as all car tyre retailers).

    Tubes are turned into Velo-Butylene™ which in turn is made into new products.

    Tyres are shredded, and split into: the steel, which goes to standard metal recyling, and shredded rubber which can be used for equestrian or other rubber crumb surfaces OR shredded again into a finer crumb, the fibres removed and used in construction, and the remaining fine rubber crumb then used to make rubber flooring mats, or de-vulcanised and turned into Velo-SBR™ rubber and again into new bike products.

We hate to see a good bike die.

We love to bring former glories back to their very best and provide a source of affordable, safe and ridable bikes for the community.

This prevents the waste of precious resources and the filling up of landfill with bikes.

The bigger picture

  • In every conversation, policy or discussion about transport we want individuals, companies and policy makes to make bikes the first consideration.

  • Supporting a low carbon future our community longs for and the District Council’s proposals to be carbon neutral by 2030. We are helping to build the transport infrastructure required for a carbon neutral future through all of our work.

  • We want to help active travel drive forward health and wellbeing. Every journey for commerce, commuting or pleasure could become a bike journey. A bike network will help us live healthier and more sustainable lives that create social capital every time we travel.

    Families and households should be able to safely use bikes to move around the District and have fun! This will help health and community connections. We aim to identify the barriers to cycling and encourage people to ask the question; can we use a bike for this journey?

    We will make it easier for individuals to choose the bike for their journeys in our District.

    The use of the car for commuting is bad for our health, bad for the planet and expensive. With the right infrastructure (training cyclists, planning safe routes and maintenance of bikes, adoption of the e-bike), most commuting locally can become pedal-powered.

  • Supporting people into employment and providing training and educational opportunities for all. A new green economy needs highly trained, skilled technicians and a new style of managers for the future economy.

We want to see more people on bikes and this is the guiding principle behind everything we do.

We are happy to spend the little bit of extra time to give some free advice, help someone to get the best setup, or just be accessible and friendly.

We think that every bike we fix, is another bike that’s going to be used. Whether that replaces a car journey, enables self sufficient transport, gives someone the physical and mental boost of some light (or extremely heavy!) exercise; it’s all moving in the right direction.

What have we achieved so far?

Read more about it in our social impact report - download here