Hospital cycle parking needs improvement

The light at the end of the tunnel is becoming brighter, as the worst days of the pandemic are hopefully behind us. It’s time now to reflect and build for the future. This includes looking at the failures of protecting our NHS heroes from bicycle theft.

If you follow the Stolen Ride social media accounts and the blog, you will have read about and seen the volume of bikes stolen from NHS workers over the past year.


We now want to reflect on one area, cycle parking at hospitals. It’s clear that a lot of NHS workers who cycle to work have been let down by poor facilities. Especially whilst their bikes have been hotter targets, with most office workers having had their bikes tucked away at home during lockdown.

Stolen Ride have not been the only ones who have been talking about cycle parking at hospitals. Calum from the London Cycling Campaign released the following, incredibly powerful video on Twitter:

We feel the video perfectly sums up some of the main issues at certain facilities:

  • Poor layout and planning of the facility
  • Bikes are visible to opportunistic thieves
  • Storage is often accessible to everyone (no security measures at the entrance)
  • Lack of monitoring – the evidence of bicycle theft is everywhere – broken locks on the floor for example

In April 2020 we placed the following #stolenNHSbikes tweet on @StolenRide to get the views of the London cycling community:


Here are a few of your thoughts:

The community also noted that not all hospitals are in the same boat, some do already have some provision of secure facilities:

At Stolen Ride we strongly urge all hospitals/trusts to audit their cycle parking and consider secure/monitored parking. We encourage the government, councils, TfL, cycle parking suppliers and others to step in and help correct the current situation.