Interview with Jack Aldridge-Deacon from Sustrans

Originally published in our Summer 2025 newsletter, here’s an interview with Jack Aldridge Deacon of the Walk Wheel Cycle Trust (known at the time as Sustrans).

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I had the chance to chat with Jack, who is an Active Travel Officer at Sustrans and has been helping to deliver the free bikes to people looking for work.

Hi, Jack, thanks for coming today. Firstly, can you tell us broadly what Sustrans is, and about the latest project?
Sustrans is the charity that helps people walk, wheel and cycle. We work with schools, community groups and others to encourage active travel. In Nottingham, we’ve been running projects for several years now, in particular helping people who are looking for work. We’ve been providing them with bikes, accessories, and personalised travel plans, to help them travel around Nottingham.

Can you tell us more about why you think this project is important?
As public transport gets more expensive, it becomes less accessible as a means of getting around the city – with regards to this project, it’s particularly a barrier to where people can look for work, and whether they can attend interviews, etc. Providing them with a bike opens up the city to them, and we also provide safety accessories and cycle training to give them the confidence to ride on the roads and keep their bike working smoothly.

That’s all great! As the project is coming to a close (with only one session remaining at time of writing), how do you feel it’s been going?
It’s been going well! At the beginning, there was a little anxiety about whether we’d get enough people signing up, but as the weather became more summer-y, numbers increased. We’ve had a lot of interest from various community groups who work with people out of work, and some nice feedback from the project beneficiaries themselves too, about the difference it’s making to their lives. The current round is ending soon, but we hope to be able to continue offering the same thing in future – and of course it’d be great to expand it! (Editor’s note: The project was extended further into the year!)

It’s great to hear that it’s already making a difference to people’s lives! As we both know, cycling is really good for physical and mental health, so how do you think Nottingham can encourage more people to do it?
Over recent years there’s been a lot of new cycling infrastructure put in, which is very useful for encouraging more people to cycle. It began focused largely on more affluent areas, for example the super cycle highway between Beeston and the city centre – but more recently more of the city has seen improvements, for example the cycle lanes up St Ann’s Well Road, and along Beechdale Road. Sometimes motorists complain about the roadworks, and space being taken away from cars, but they’ll almost all agree that it was nice in ‘the good old days’ when you could ride your bike anywhere without feeling threatened!

I think the city as a whole needs to continue building on the network of cycle lanes and safer cycling routes that have been developed in recent years. They key thing for me is that cycling should be accessible for everyone in Nottingham, and ensuring that cyclists of all abilities can gain easy access to good quality, safe and secure cycle infrastructure will go a long way to making that happen.

Yes, I’d love to see a future where everybody has access to cycling, and feels confident doing it too! Lastly, could you tell us about what you’re riding at the moment?
I’m currently riding an old Falcon Corsair, which feels a bit like two pieces of drainpipe welded together! But it’s comfortable, and only cost me £40, to replace an old bike that I was really attached to. As Marie Kondo would say, it ‘sparks joy’ when I ride it!