Claire supports a Bike Doctor event attendee to get their cycle back on the road

Health checks aren’t just for people; they are for cycles too! For the last 2 years, Everybody’s Cycling have partnered with York St John University to support people on campus and beyond, to embrace sustainability and give their cycles a free mechanical health check-up to make sure they’re safe to ride.

Fully qualified cycle mechanics Ian, Rob, and Claire have been our Bike Doctors at York St John since 2024. The Bike Doctor service is a fully mobile mini workshop that provides free safety checks and minor repairs – such as replacing standard brake pads, indexing gears and repairing punctures, to give tired cycles a new lease of life.

Rob works on giving a cycle a thorough health check

According to Cycling UK, it’s estimated that over 40% of adults in England have access to a bike, but only around one in six of those (or approximately 10-12% of all adults) cycles more than once a week. Bike Doctor events encourage people to choose cycling as an affordable, sustainable and healthy form of transport.

York St John University is committed to reducing carbon emissions and increasing forms of active travel. Following on from their sustainable travel survey in 2024, our Bike Doctors were invited to set up mobile maintenance workshops on campus that have increased in attendance year by year.

Jessica Hollis, YSJ Environment Management Officer said “We started off with just one Bike Doctor in November 2024, however 18 cycles were fixed by Ian and he was having to turn people away! This helped set up our staff and students for the new academic year and to make sure they were safe.

We rethought our budget and decided that future events needed two Bike Doctors. and booked another session for January 2025 to coincide with another repair cafe. 14 cycles were fixed at this event, with more in-depth repairs including front and rear brake pads.

We had another session in May 2025 (again with a repair cafe!) and over 40 cycles were worked on! The Bike Doctors also did ad hoc training for our community on our public bike repair station which was great!

The final event for 2025 was in November which was absolutely freezing, but the turnout was great for such a cold day, and Rob and Claire did a brilliant job with 19 cycles fixed.

A Bike Doctor session in full swing

Jessica went on to say “Every event we’ve had with Everybody’s Cycling has run smoothly and Rob and Claire worked really hard on fixing cycles while teaching people what to look out for and how to do simple tasks. It’s meant that we’ve been able to support those who are new or confused by bike maintenance, helping them gain confidence and the skills needed and facilitating sustainable active travel!

As York St John University have shown, there are lots of benefits to being a cycle-friendly employer including reduced costs, healthier staff, increased productivity and reducing congestion on the roads. If your organisation would like to find out more about bringing our Bike Doctor service to your workplace, or any of the other services we can provide, please contact us here.

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