Bikeworks plans pan-London growth

An east London social enterprise training homeless people as bike engineers is taking its first steps to becoming a capital-wide company.

Tower Hamlets-based Bikeworks, recently named best social enterprise in England, has won a contract to set up in west London and hopes to be up and running by early next year.

The community interest company, which opened two years ago, not only gives homeless people new skills through three-month training programmes, but runs cycle training for local residents and people with disabilities, recycles old bicycles, sells bicycles, has bicycles for hire around the Olympic Park and promotes an active lifestyle.

The operation serving Kensington and Chelsea will be smaller than its parent company, but co-director Dave Miller said it was the first step to becoming 'pan-London' or even England-wide.

'This contract will enable us to do a number of things like bike maintenance, recycling and cycle training. It's effectively getting more for your money,' he said.

'It's a small deal - about £120,000 in partnership with the Westway Development Trust - but we hope to leverage in further funding from the local authority. We may also look at getting contracts in youth services and colleges.'

However, while small, Miller said the new contract was the start of a much bigger growth plan.

'London is big and there's scope to set up all over. We'd like to see a Bikeworks in east, west, north and south, maybe even on a borough level and possibly through social franchising. There is pressure for us to expand and we have an ambition to grow,' he said.

'We're trying to broaden our business model because we need to be independent. We can't be dependent on just our cycle training, which funds our other projects.

'We need to grow social enterprise across the UK if we're going to change anything.'

Bikeworks provides cycle training for around 2,000 people a year, including 80 regular places referred by a London GP's Cycle For Health programme. It has so far trained 27 homeless people as bicycle engineers, 12 of whom are still in work, and another 13 who are due to graduate before the end of the year.

The Olympics is also offering new opportunities and Bikeworks is already running tours and a bike hire scheme at the Olympic Park's viewing area.

And Miller said he hoped to be involved in London's forthcoming bicycle hire scheme, although he admitted that all these growth plans required 'big chunks' of investment.

BLOB As England winner of the Social Enterprise Coalition's social enterprise awards, Bikeworks is in the running for the UK-wide awards, announced tomorrow. Find out who wins on www.socialenterpriselive.com on Friday.

www.bikeworks.org.uk