Posting on this board - be aware

For discussions within the Cycle Training profession.
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Graham
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Posting on this board - be aware

Post by Graham »

The Cycle Training board
The "National Standard Cycle Training" board is provided as one of the requirements of government support and funding in that area. It is meant for discussions between those involved in professional cycle training and for public questions to those professionals. Inappropriate material on this board will be removed without warning.

What is happening with CTC and Cycletraining ??

Hopefully Rob's reply will cast into context whatever is going on ( or not going on! ) as at July 2008. Please contact rob.fuller@ctc.org.uk with any specific question.

rob.fuller@ctc.org.uk wrote:The Cycle Training Standards Board (CTSB) is the body that replaced the
old Cycle Training Reference Group (CTRG). This latter body was the
fairly loose coalition of organisations from the cycle training, road
safety and national/devolved governments that led the development of
what ultimately became the National Standards for Cycle Training. The
CTRG was bought together in 2003 by CTC and the Local Authority Road
Safety Officers Association (LARSOA) who effectively represented the
opposite sides of what was at times quite a controversial development
process.

The success of this development process can be seen when National (UK)
government (DfT) endorsed the National Standards as the recognised form
of cycle training in England in October 2006. At the same time, Cycling
England also recognised the potential of cycle training to achieve many
of the aims of their young peoples programme and committed to putting
serious investment into the sector. The also recognised the need for a
public-facing, marketable brand for the National Standards and this led
to the development of the Bikeability award scheme.

With the creation and launch of Bikeability, it was recognised that the
organic, messy but ultimately necessary style of development that had
characterised the CTRG needed to be replaced by a more structured
system. As a result the CTSB came into being as a government recognised
standards board to oversee the long-term management and growth of the
standards. More on the CTSB can be found at http://www.ctsb.org.uk

From the outset of the CTRG, CTC had pushed for cycle training to
develop into a fully commercial, competitive activity. However we
realised that the size and scope of CTC could seriously prevent the
development of this market if we were involved in direct delivery of
cycle training and instructor training activities. As a result we
voluntarily took on the role of the 'infrastructure' body for the sector
which in practice means the following:

Performing secretariat duties for CTRG
Managing the instructor registration database and associated processes
Acting as the accrediting body for Instructor Training Providers
Providing supporting services and materials e.g. Insurance, certificates
etc.
Providing an instructor listings service on our website
Providing a telephone helpline service both the instructors and to the
public looking to find instructors
Distributing grants on behalf of Cycling England

In order to fund some of these activities, DfT did part-pay us a grant
to run the Cycle Training Helpline for two years, however this funding
ended in September 2007. We also managed the Cycle Training Capacity
Building Grant on behalf of Cycling England for 3 years which allowed us
to do a number of activities, of which the principal one was to
distribute the instructors bursaries. This programme ended at the end of
March this year. As a result, we currently do not receive any funding to
run our support activities for the sector and are having to support the
sector from our charitable resources. We believe that this is a
temporary hiatus until further funding becomes available, however in
order to minimise the impact of this gap we have had to reduce our
service levels to the training sector. This has led to backlogs and
reduced response times across all of the training services which is
unfortunate but inevitable in the current circumstances.

It is also worth noting that CTSB, following a recent consultation, is
currently reviewing the way that the sector is governed and this is
likely to significantly impact the way CTC operates in the future. We
are in the process of preparing a statement about our future plans and
these will be put to the sector in the near future.
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