Grants of up to £3,500 are available to a range of not-for-profit and charitably inclined organisations in England, including local authorities, for projects that support people returning to cycling, starting as complete beginners, as well as people who do not cycle regularly.
The target audience for the Big Bike Revival grant programme 2025 is adults who are either not currently cycling or cycling less frequently, in general once a month or less, such as:
- Armed Forces veterans
- People not meeting physical activity guidelines
- People on low incomes
- People who identify as belonging to an ethnic minority group
- People with perceived barriers to cycling
- Refugees and Asylum Seekers
- Women
Children can join events but only if accompanied by a participating adult, ideally one child per adult.
Adults might for example be keen to learn how to cycle the school run or encourage their family to cycle as an economic and healthy way to travel for local journeys.
The aim of the programme is to increase the number of short, local journeys made by bike for practical transport reasons. The aims include increasing the number of adults who cycle, encouraging adults who don’t cycle to start, encouraging an increase in cycle journeys, improving the perception of safety and converting short car trips into cycling ones.
The programme is based on the COM-B (Capability, Opportunity, Motivation) framework of behaviour change theory. In other words, FIX events provide the opportunity, LEARN events the capability and RIDE events the motivation for adults to change their cycling behaviour. More details on how the theory links to our events model can be found on the Big Bike Revival website.
Grant funding up to £3,500 per application is available to support the delivery of events. The level of grant awarded will be shaped by individual events, plans and organisational costs. Every application is reviewed on a case-by-case basis, However, as a rough guide:
- For a grant of £2,000, partners should be able to deliver at least six events, and
- For a grant of £3,500, partners should be able to deliver at least 10 events.
Eligible grant costs cover a wide range of items to support the delivery of events, such as staffing, promotional costs, equipment purchases, consumables and volunteer transport. For the full list please consult the Application Guidance or speak to your local Cycling Development Officer.
Events must be delivered between Friday 18 April 2025 and Friday 31 October 2025. Details of Big Bike events across England for 2025 will be mapped on the Cycling UK website shortly.
Further information, guidance and an online application form can be found on Cycling UK’s website (scroll down to the foot of the page). Please note that the application form does not have a save function.
The application deadline is Monday 14 July 2025. Applications may be made at any time up to the deadline and will be reviewed on an ongoing basis as they arrive with Cycling UK.
Cycling UK strongly recommends that eligible organisations thinking of applying should contact their relevant Cycling Development Officer in their region to discuss their application before applying.