A COMMUNITY bike project with workshops in Basingstoke has been given a grant to encourage cycling.

The Community Furniture Project Basingstoke has been awarded a generous grant from South Western Railway (SWR) to develop its bicycle repair workshop.

The charity sells second-hand furniture and bikes to encourage sustainability through reuse and support the costs of volunteering and training services to people in need.

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It also collects discarded bicycles from train stations all around North Hampshire and brings them back to their workshops in Joule Road, Basingstoke. The bikes are cleaned, repaired, and deemed safe for use, then passed on to the community.

The grant supplied by SWR will allow the organisation to continue its work with bikes. 

Project manager Phelim O’Hagan said: "This grant will train our staff to a very high level of expertise and enable us to increase the capacity of our bicycle workshop.

“It will give us a steady supply of abandoned bikes and allow us to educate more people on how to maintain their bikes safely. We would like to thank South Western Railway for their very generous gift.’’

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Maryam Zade, SWR’s customer and communities improvement fund manager, said: "This project will benefit the local community by providing them with knowledge and skills, as well as encouraging them to use more sustainable methods of travel to get around their local area."

To help support the Bicycle Repair Workshop, the charity will be running a series of open workshops, free of charge, to teach bicycle maintenance techniques and to encourage safe cycling.

The first open workshop will be held on Thursday, September 21, from 10am-1pm.

To book a place and for more information, go to cfpbasingstoke.org.