Our AGM is on Wednesday the 24th of June at 7pm online.

Please get involved, ask questions, praise or criticise, join the activist team!

Zoom link https://us02web.zoom.us/j/9650628536

Sarah and Pete from the Sheffield City Region Active Travel Team will be presenting the cycle network map, design standards and do a Q&A.

Dr’s Ollie (Doc on a Bike / @Ollie2Wheeler) and Liz will discuss why and how health providers should take active travel more seriously.

CycleSheffield will present our report of the year and do a Q&A.

CycleSheffield is your campaign group, so please let us know what you think.

Everyone welcome!

2020 Annual report

CycleSheffield annual report 2020

During the past year, CycleSheffield has been very busy campaigning for a cycle friendly city which would enable more people to travel actively.

This short report details some of the highlights, as well as the state of our finances, and relationship with local government.

For more details, please check out our website or follow us on social media:

• https://www.cyclesheffield.org.uk/
• https://www.facebook.com/CycleSheffield/
• https://twitter.com/CycleSheffield
• https://www.instagram.com/cyclesheffield/

Supporters (as of 01/06/20)

Significant increases across the board:

• 1,658 signed up supporters (increase of 300)
• 1,240 people on the emailing list (increase of 200)
• 4,483 Twitter followers (increase of 500)
• 1,011 Facebook group members (increase of 300)
• 1,719 Facebook followers (increase of 200)
• 899 Instagram followers (increase of 100)

Finance (as of 01/06/20)

The CycleSheffield finances are in good shape with over £6,400 in the bank as of 01/06/20. In the last year we have spent £2300 and our income was £1800.

By far our biggest expenditure was the Division Street closure event (paying SCC to suspend parking for 2 days cost CycleSheffield £1,060).

Although there is no fee to join as a supporter, there are many people who continue to donate, often on a regular basis. We also have had a very generous contribution from Sheffield CTC.

Please get in touch if you would like to donate to support our campaign!

Rebranding

CycleSheffield has slightly changed its branding. It has recently moved from ‘CycleSheffield: love both’ to ‘CycleSheffield: streets4people’.

The move reflects that CycleSheffield has for some time been campaigning for active travel infrastructure, which enables walking as well as cycling but also on the creation of people friendly streets and places, rather than just transport.

The ‘streets4people’ tag will hopefully widen the appeal for people to support the campaign.

A further development could be the removal of ‘CycleSheffield’ to Sheffield: streets4people. However, this has yet to be decided.

Interactions with Sheffield City Council (SCC)

We have had good engagement with the new(ish) cabinet member for transport, cllr Bob Johnson. He attended our meeting in January for a Q&A session with our supporters.

We have responded to and met with officers and councillors to discuss a number of issues, for example, the Transforming Cities Funding programme and the London Road / Broadfield Road widening schemes. We have responded to various developments and planning applications.

Cycle Forum

We continue to attend the SCC Cycle Forum which is a useful source of information. CycleSheffield has suggested that the forum be re-launched as an active travel group. 

Interactions with Sheffield City Region (SCR)

We have had good engagement with the Sheffield City Region Active Travel team who have now been in post for a year. Pete Zanzottera, the project director, attended our meeting in September for a Q&A session with our supporters.

Activist group

We have moved away from a formal committee to a group of activists. The aim has been to encourage people to contribute to our campaign in any way they can, but not necessarily attend meetings.

It is difficult to assess how successful this approach is. However, CycleSheffield continues to have a good profile and has certainly been very busy campaigning.

As with so many campaign groups, CycleSheffield is dependent on volunteer activists.  

If you are interested in getting involved please get in touch!

Reimagining Sheffield’s streets 

Sam Wakeling has produced a number of inspirational  Sheffield street ‘reminagings’ which we have been able to use in our campaigns and on social media. These have proved very popular on social media and the Sheffield Star and Telegraph have run a number of stories using them.

Response to Clean Air Zone proposal

SCC consulted on a proposed Clean Air Zone in July 2019. We supported the proposals but urged them to go further and charge private vehicles entering the zone.

‘People friendly’ Division Street event

In October we arranged the trial closure of Division Street to motor traffic for one. This ‘People Friendly Division Street’ was a great success made possible by the hard work of CycleSheffield volunteers – especially Andrew Rodgers – and the assistance of Sheffield Council councillors and officers. We were asked to present a report of the event to the SCC Economic and Environmental Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee (SCCEEWSC) in November where the closure to motor traffic received cross-party backing.

At this meeting we were asked about the possibility of a second trial to explore the potential benefits further. However, following the emergence of the Covid19 pandemic the partial closure to motor traffic of Division Street was in the first list of interventions announced by SCC. Whilst we can’t take full responsibility for this, our trial in October definitely brought the issue to the fore and we can safely say contributed to its early inclusion.

Kelham Island and Neepsend Community Association (KINCA)

We have forged a relationship with the Kelham Island and Neepsend Community Association where we have been able to provide some support and guidance on active travel issues that need to be considered as they pursue a living streets/low traffic neighbourhood type scheme for their area.

Covid-19 and the implications for transport

We backed the Cycling UK campaign asking people contact their councillors to request trial cycling and walking infrastructure. This received a very good response in Sheffield with 1200 people writing to SCC. We have discussed this issue at length with SCC and SCR. 

SCC have recently implemented some temporary active travel measures, as well as announcing planned modal filtering at Kelham Island. Theses changes are very welcome. However, we continue to campaign for more ambitious changes as part of the Coronavirus response.

Sheffield Council have bid for £584k from the DfT ‘Emergency Active Travel’ funding, although this money has not been released yet. A further £2.2m is available to Sheffield to bid for in the autumn.

Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust

Since March 2019, CycleSheffield supporters have been engaging with the senior leadership team of the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust (STH). STH employs some 17,000 people and provides hospital and community services, most notably the hospital site at the Northern General and Royal Hallamshire.

The Trust Chief Executive, Kirsten Major has said “With regards to working with Sheffield City Council we fully endorse the work they are undertaking to improve facilities for both cyclists and pedestrians – and indeed e-bikers. The Active Travel Advisory Board is coordinating work to look at how grants will be allocated and spent and we are already working with them to look at how we can take advantage of this situation including both what can be done to make improvements close to our sites and also how we develop an active travel route between the Northern and Southern campus.”

Climate Action Fund bid

The Sheffield Climate Alliance has led on the submission of a bid to the Lottery Climate Action Fund, with a value of around £100,000. If successful, the funds will allow for the development of a full bid, which could be £millions.

CycleSheffield contributed to this, especially around the transport and clean air section.

The bid was submitted at the start of April and the outcome of the application is expected soon.

Festival of Debate

CycleSheffield had planned to run a debate about active travel at this popular annual event. However, the debate was cancelled due to the Coronavirus crisis but hopefully take place now in October.

Lets Ride event

We attended the Lets Ride event on Sunday the 14th of July, the large number of participants (over 10,000 in 2019 – the largest Lets Ride event in the country) meant that we had a great audience for our campaign.

Election of officers

We need to appoint 3 officers: a chair, secretary and finance officer.