Ask your councillor candidates to support cycling for everyone

We’ve made it as easy as possible for you to contact your candidates and raise cycling up the agenda in the upcoming elections – just follow the steps below.

Write to your candidates with our online action

Write to your councillor candidates

Our online action is the easiest way to contact your candidates.

We don’t have details for every candidate, as we are relying on crowdsourced data. However, we’ve written to almost 2000 candidates and asked them to pledge to support two asks:

• The investment needed in active travel to achieve the 2025 target to double levels of cycling, making active travel a priority in all transport and neighbourhood decision-making.
• The development and delivery of an active travel network of safe, accessible and direct routes including cycling infrastructure networks designed to national standards in every town and city, and rural routes to link these.

Candidates want your vote, so you can use our action to see if they’ve made the pledge and let them know this matters to you by writing to them.

If you find that we don’t have the details for all your candidates, don’t worry - there’s plenty more you can do, just follow the steps below.

Contact your candidates on social media

You can use WhoCanIVoteFor to find out who else is standing to be your candidate, and in many cases, you’ll find links to their twitter accounts. As twitter is a public forum, it can sometimes be even more effective in gathering support than a direct email.

A well-targeted tweet can get your candidates thinking about the role cycling can play in the coronavirus recovery, especially if you’re able to spark a public discussion by the various candidates in your ward!

Some suggested tweets :

• As candidates to be my councillor for [insert your electoral ward], will you all commit to being #pedallingpoliticians by pledging to support the two asks in @WeAreCyclingUK’s Manifesto for Cycling? bit.ly/3gsxVQH [Make sure to tag each of your candidates].
• Cycling should play a key role in our coronavirus recovery. As my councillor candidates, will you pledge to be #pedallingpoliticians and, if elected, support increased investment in cycling and walking, and the asks in @WeAreCyclingUK’s Manifesto for Cycling? bit.ly/3gsxVQH [Make sure to tag each of your candidates].
• Cycling keeps people healthy, reduces emissions, and is fun! But cycling should be for everyone: we need a network of safe and accessible cycle lanes. You all want to be my next councillor: if elected, will you support the development of this network? #pedallingpoliticians [Make sure to tag each of your candidates].

If you tweet your candidates and they respond to indicate their support, let us know – we’ll be keeping track of which candidates are committing, if elected, to support cycling.

Write to your other candidates directly

Having found out who your candidates are on WhoCanIVoteFor, you may also be able to find some email addresses not included in our action.

For those who don’t have an email, with a quick search online, you might be able find one.

If you do, we’ve prepared a draft email you can use to write to them to seek their support.

Please let us know if your candidates reply indicating their support.

Get involved in your local cycling campaign

If you’re not already involved in your local cycling campaign group, this is a great time to change that – many groups are actively campaigning in the local elections.

You can find Cycling UK affiliated cycling campaign groups here , but there are other groups out there too – just search the following online: “[name of your town, city or county] cycling campaign”.  

E.g. if you lived in Leeds, you could search: “Leeds Cycling Campaign”, of if you were in Shropshire, it’d be “Shropshire Cycling Campaign”.

If you want to get more involved locally, why not consider joining our Cycle Advocacy Network.