Introduction

About this report

This report sets out findings from an evaluation of the Free Bikes Pilots for school age children who cannot afford them (the Free Bikes for Children Pilot Scheme). This report was produced in autumn 2022.

The report covers:

  • Chapter Two: The pilot projects
  • Chapter Three: Targeting children and young people
  • Chapter Four: Procurement and distribution
  • Chapter Five: Storage and maintenance
  • Chapter Six: Adaptive bikes
  • Chapter Seven: Impact
  • Chapter Eight: Costs, value and scalability
  • Chapter Nine: Conclusions

The Free Bikes for Children pledge

The SNP manifesto for the Scottish election in 2021 contained a commitment to start to deliver free bikes to children who cannot afford them. This commitment sat within the wider aim of tackling the climate crisis and bringing about a revolution in transport, through providing a mechanism that allows young people to travel independently. The pledge also connects strongly with wider policy priorities around increasing active travel and reducing car travel, increasing health and wellbeing and reducing inequalities.

When the SNP government was elected, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon re-iterated this commitment in May 2021, through the Priorities of Government statement. The pledge was to establish pilot projects within the first 100 days of government, and commit to rolling the scheme out fully within 12 months.

As a result, the Free Bikes for Children Pilot Scheme was introduced to try out a range of ways to offer free bikes for school age children who could not afford one. Six pilot projects were introduced within the first 100 days, with a further four pilot projects introduced in autumn/ winter 2021. One pilot project withdrew from the pilot in early 2022, for wider reasons not related to the pilot.

The Free Bikes for Children pledge links with and supports a wider range of work that the Scottish Government is undertaking to ensure that cycling is available and accessible to all – including changing behaviours, enhancing infrastructure and providing access to active travel options. Scottish Government, working with its partners, has supported a wide range of activity to improve access to bikes - including funding for employers, community groups and schools to support access to equipment, parking or showers to encourage cycling; bike share programmes; support for e-bike projects; and support for projects to create more opportunities for people to walk or cycle.

Evaluation aims

This evaluation focused strongly on the process and mechanisms of providing free bikes for children. The evaluation explored:

  • Viability - The positives and negatives of each approach, the impact of each pilot, the challenges and the opportunities offered. It explored how each pilot project could contribute to reducing inequalities and provide fairer and easier access to bikes for children.
  • Scalability, cost and value - The feasibility of scaling successful approaches to a national level, including unit cost to deliver associated with the value of different elements of the pilots.

Evaluation method

The evaluation of the Free Bikes for Children Pilot Scheme involved six stages.

Stage 1: Building relationships and understanding

The evaluation method involved in depth work with each of the pilot projects to enable open and honest reflection from pilots around what worked well and what was challenging. It also involved building on feedback and evaluation work already being undertaken by each pilot project, and adapting the evaluation method to each pilot project as appropriate.

At an early stage, time was spent building relationships and supporting pilot projects to understand the approach to evaluation within the Free Bikes for Children Pilot Scheme. It was made clear that the evaluation would:

identify successful approaches and what works – without directly comparing the performance of projects individually

sensitively present challenges and barriers in the form of learning – alongside actions taken to address challenges, and outcomes of this

share findings and learning themes openly while retaining individual participant anonymity

focus on the overall aim of identifying the range of approaches that work well for achieving positive outcomes for children, young people and families.

A collective session was held with project leads and partners in September 2021 to introduce the evaluation, and a recorded presentation provided for projects unable to attend or funded after this date. Individual sessions were then held with each pilot scheme during October 2021 to January 2022, to discuss the approach to evaluation in more detail. An individual plan was made for each pilot scheme, tailored to their activities, timescales and target group (Ten projects were involved at this interim stage.).

Stage 2: Desktop review

The pilot schemes attended monthly check-in meetings with Transport Scotland leads, as well as providing monthly reports, budget updates and presentations to the Free Bikes for Children Pilot Scheme Board. This information was reviewed to identify key learning points, successes and challenges, to understand progress in project set up and delivery and to inform fieldwork with the project leads and partners.

Stage 3: Fieldwork with project leads

Early individual interviews were held with project leads for ten of the pilot schemes, followed up with final interviews with nine of the pilots. Interviews followed a semi-structured discussion guide (see Appendix One)  and explored:

  • project set up
  • identifying children and young people
  • working with partners
  • procuring and distributing equipment
  • meeting a range of needs
  • supporting safe and sustainable use
  • bike maintenance
  • costs and resources
  • impact
  • learning and support

Stage 4: Fieldwork with partners

Individual interviews were held with 32 project partners, from across the ten pilot schemes. Partners included school staff and teachers, community groups, bike manufacturers, bike shops, cycling clubs, youth organisations and others. Interviews explored similar issues to project leads, but focused in on the elements that the partner had been particularly involved in.

Stage 5: Fieldwork with families

Discussions were held with 36 young people and 17 parents from across nine pilots. Interviews explored:

  • how young people and families felt about the opportunity
  • how young people and families accessed the scheme
  • views on equipment offered through the scheme
  • views on safety, storage, maintenance and sustainability
  • impact of the bike and associated support, including impact on activity levels, cycling skills, health and active travel

Pilot projects also issued surveys to young people and parents/ carers to gather a wider range of views. A total of 64 survey responses were received from young people and 42 from parents/ carers. Most young people (74%) responding to the survey lived in the 30% most deprived parts of Scotland (based on the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation) and almost all lived in the 50% most deprived areas. Surveys were tailored to each project, dependent on wider evaluation plans.

Stage 6: Analysis and reporting

An interim report highlighting early learning was produced in spring 2022. An online learning event was held for pilot projects in May 2022.

This final report builds on quantitative and qualitative evidence. A framework was developed for understanding the cost of providing free bikes to children and the value of different approaches, based on learning from the pilots. Qualitative evidence was analysed using a process of manual thematic coding, to identify patterns and key themes. Content relating to each pilot project was sent to the project lead for approval.