Be-spoke course
PC Dave Chadwick and John Ellis, Head of Motor Vehicle at
Doncaster College pictured with some of the donated bikes.
Doncaster College is working with South Yorkshire Police
to get a new course up and running.
The qualification, which looks at the repair of bicycles, could
not run at the College due to the lack of damaged bicycles they had
for the students to repair as part of the course.
To help with this, South Yorkshire Police have agreed to provide
the College with more than enough bikes to run the course, from
their property store in Doncaster.
The property store is full of bikes which have been stolen or
abandoned, and officers have been unable to trace the owners. These
bikes are usually kept in the store for up to 12 months before they
are disposed of.
Some of these bikes have now been donated to the College so that
the students can learn how to repair and maintain them, giving them
the skills needed to look after their own bikes ensuring they are
safe on the roads across Doncaster.
PC Dave Chadwick from the Urban Safer Neighbourhood Team (SNT)
who has helped set up the scheme said, "So far we have donated 30
bikes to the college, which would otherwise be collecting dust in
our property store. It's an excellent partnership between the
College and police and is really pleasing to be able to support
young people to develop new skills."
John Ellis, Head of Motor Vehicle at the College said, "I'd seen
from the City and Guilds website that they were beginning to make a
qualification for cycles starting at entry Level 3 and going all
the way up to NVQ Level 2 and because we take on quite a number of
disadvantaged learners I thought it would be a good idea if we
could run the course."
"Even though they would go for auction I would imagine that they
would get very little for them because of the state of repair which
is needed with a lot of them but at least now the students have got
the advantage of being able to strip them down and see what's worn
and we can repair them."
Updated: 10/02/2012