Forth Valley College’s Stirling Campus has been awarded a Cycling Friendly Campus award with distinction from Cycling Scotland - the nation’s cycling organisation.
The award reflects the college’s commitment to promoting cycling as a healthy and sustainable travel choice through: installing high quality infrastructure; providing services for cyclists such as bike maintenance stands, cycle lockers, led ride initiatives and the NextBike scheme; and the excellent level of support provided by successful partnerships with organisations such as Stirling Cycle Hub, Forth Environment Link, Recyke-a-bike, Stirling Council and Cycling Scotland.
FVC has also participated in the Campus Cycle Officer internship programme which is organised by Cycling Scotland and are now host to their third Officer for the next academic year.
Andrew Lawson, FVC’s Depute Principal and Chief Operating Officer was on hand to accept the framed certificate from Valentin Jeanjean, Development Officer at Cycling Scotland, Clara Walker, Director, Forth Environment Link and Susan McDougall, Transport & Travel Planning Officer, Stirling Council, on Monday 21 October.
Andrew Lawson, said: “We would like to thank Cycling Scotland for presenting us with this honour and assure them that we will continue to improve and enhance our cycling provision as much as we can in the future. We are delighted and proud to be an official Cycle Friendly Campus here at Stirling.
“I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has supported the work that has been carried out across the whole of the college, but especially here at the Stirling Campus to improve our cycling facilities. I now hope that we can achieve the same Cycle Friendly status at the new Falkirk Campus and at Alloa, soon.”
Valentin Jeanjean, Development Officer at Cycling Scotland, said: “I commend the efforts of Forth Valley College, whose commitment to getting more students and staff on bikes has been exemplary: with people choosing to travel to campus by bike now benefitting from the new, high-quality infrastructure.
“Forth Valley College has increased access to bikes through a range of effective partnerships, by sponsoring NextBike memberships, and running regular confidence training sessions to make cycling accessible and easy for anyone. I would like to congratulate the college, just the second one in Scotland to receive this award, on their achievement and look forward to working with them in the future.”
If anyone is interested in finding out more about the cycling initiatives here at FVC they should get in touch with Cycling Officer Heather Davis heather.davis@forthvalley.ac.uk or Pauline Donaldson Pauline.donaldson@forthvalley.ac.uk for further information.