Renovating old bikes can be a very absorbing and satisfying activity, and many people recognise the benefits such work can bring to all kinds of people. Oxford Cycle Workshop is keen to see its remit extend to this kind of work where possible.

Work with Young Offenders
Work with the homeless
If you work with clients that you would like to place at OCW

Work with Young Offenders

OCW has been keen to work with the County Youth Offending Team (YOT) since its opening in 2002. New arrangements mean that young people who have committed offences are now involved in two areas of work. Firstly, they are helping to install some of the subsidised cycle parking that OCW is fitting for community facilities and low income households in East Oxford. This is particularly apt work to be doing as part of the YOT's drive to get young offenders to give something back to the community in order to make amends for their offence.

Secondly, OCW is training some of the YOT supervisors so that they can work in our workshop renovating children's bikes with young people. The YOT is particularly keen to hear about victims of crime who might benefit from receiving one of these bikes, to complete the cycle, so to speak. E-mail us at mail@oxfordcycleworkshop.org.uk and we will pass the message on.

Work with the homeless

In 2003/2004 OCW was pleased to work with Aspire Oxfordshire, helping them to run a mobile 'Bike Doctor' at several locations around the city. Aspire sets up small businesses with the specific remit to employ people who have been homeless and are trying to get back into full time employment, and the Bike Doctor employed one or two such people at a time. Although the scheme was successful in some ways, and well loved by its customers, Aspire has had to cease running it for financial reasons. It may continue, but without the homelessness element.

If you work with clients that you would like to place at OCW

Since its launch, OCW has had many calls from organisations hoping to place people in need of work experience for one reason or another. Unfortunately, we have had to decline in almost all cases. This is a great shame, but we would here like to set out the main reasons (and suggest ways forward):

The type of work - many people contact us with the assumption that fixing bikes is a low skilled job. This is not the case. Although not as complex as a car, a bicycle is a serious piece of machinery that is designed to be used on the public highway. A responsible cycle shop must keep in mind the safety of its customers and adhere to high standards in its work. The industry is becoming much more rigorous and professional, with accredited qualifications and talk of some sort of proper 'cycle MOT' being proposed. Furthermore, financial margins are very low, and in practise even volunteers cost us quite a lot to supervise and train.

We have no external funding - it seems that many people assume that an organisation like ours must be run, and funded, by the council or similar. We are entirely independent, and aside from a few specific projects our income comes entirely from sales of bikes and accessories. We see ourselves as a 'social enterprise', i.e. a company, run as a financially self sustaining business (although not-for-profit), that provides, and charges for, social 'goods'. Training and work experience for those who would not usually be employable is a 'social good' - and if as a society we want that good, someone has to pay for it. The harsh truth is that if we were to provide it for free, we would go out of business very quickly.

Lack of space - at the moment this is another major constraining factor. We have room for 4 skilled mechanics and a supervisor to work in our shop, and we need all of them working full time to cover their own wages plus the business overhead. If we were to take referrals for some sort of work experience we would have to lose one or more member of staff, and what we charged for that work experience would have to reflect not just the value of the experience, but also the opportunity cost of the lost member(s) of staff.

The above all sounds pretty gloomy. However, in our consultancy work we are offering advice to projects elsewhere in the country which combine a retail workshop like OCW with a separate training workshop run by a training company. The model is for the training company to provide courses for all sorts of hard to employ groups, using cycle renovation as a peg on which to hang training in other key social and work skills. The company would still be run on 'social enterprise' lines, and would charge for the training, but it would employ a liason worker to help referring agencies apply for the funds needed to pay for the training. If these schemes prove viable, we may be interested in starting something similar in Oxford - so if this interests you let us know and we will keep you on file. Please note that this is only an expression of interest at this point. We are making no definite committment to start this project, and if we do work will not start before early 2006.

E-mail Dominic at dom@oxfordcycleworkshop.org.uk