This annual report was approved at Newham Cyclists’ 2026 AGM on Monday 29th June, at Canning Town Library. For ease of reading and searching, we have copied the text of the annual report to this page; you can download the PDF original at the foot of this page.

State of Play for Cycling in Newham 2026

The 2025-2026 Committee period was a mixed bag for cycling in our borough. A flurry of delivery of very high quality cycling infrastructure projects in Newham was welcome—as was rocketing demand for our regular Fix Your Ride stall at Woodgrange Market. That said, the political upheaval in Newham Council from the recent election cycle has muddied the waters; mixed messages from our new Mayor, Forhad Hussain, mean it is unclear what the future of Newham’s healthy streets programme will look like.

Fatalities and other incidents

In last year’s report, we noted the first cycling fatality in Newham in 4½ years—a man in his early 20s hit and killed by a lorry driver on 13 January 2025 at the unprotected Carpenters Road junction on Stratford High Street. We and our colleagues at LCC believe the person who died was a student who had only arrived in London a few weeks previously. We are very disappointed that there has been no meaningful progress—not even any designs shared for consultation—on fixing this, and the other run of dangerous junctions on Stratford High Street which is part of TfL Cycleway 2. Our understanding is that the inquest is due to be held in August, although it is likely this will move again if the police investigation is not finished in time.

Unfortunately, this Committee period has seen two more tragic and preventable cycling fatalities. Our deepest condolences go to everyone who loved those who died.

The only number of acceptable deaths and serious injuries in traffic is zero. It is important to take the Newham figures in context with the wider crash figures across London. Recent claims from prominent anti-cycling campaigners that the recent expansion of protected cycling infrastructure in London has led to an increase in injuries or fatalities are simply untrue. While investigations are still ongoing into all of Newham’s recent three fatalities, they do match the pattern of fatalities across London in recent years—overwhelmingly more likely to occur at places where the protected cycling infrastructure either disappears, or is inadequate and not fit for purpose.

TfL’s Vision Zero Action Plan 2 was published on 13th March 2026, which discussed the importance of collaboration between boroughs, TfL, and the Police, with key topics including infrastructure, the proliferation of larger vehicles such as SUVs and autonomous vehicles/robo-taxis, and the need for improved driver compliance with speed limits.

Barry Shonibare

On Monday 16th June 2025, Barry Shonibare, who lived in Forest Gate, was on his way to tend to a friend’s garden as a favour, when he was hit by the driver of a Mercedes on Centre Road/Woodford Road, just metres from the Newham boundary. The driver of the Mercedes initially departed the scene and then returned on foot a short time later. Barry died in hospital five days later, on Saturday 21 June. He was 71.

We organised a vigil on 14th July, where we were honoured to be joined by Barry’s family and friends who had travelled to be with us, along with a large number of local residents and Tom Fyans, CEO of LCC. Barry’s family said in their statement when he was named by the Police: “no family or individuals should suffer this heartbreak again.” His brother described losing him in this way as “really unfair.”

Our deputy co-ordinator Karen noted: “Those of us who live here and travel through this stretch of Centre Road and Woodford Road on a regular basis know that it is dangerous. The relative safety of the wand-protected cycle lanes further up the road disappears. The road widens. As you can tell even now, speeding is endemic here… Surely now is the time to fund and build the measures that we know will prevent tragedies like this from happening again?”

Richard Wisken

On Tuesday 10th March, Richard Wisken, a copywriter originally from Australia who lived in Gallions Reach, was cycling on Atlantis Avenue when he was hit by the driver of a TfL 366 bus. Rich died in the ICU at the Royal London Hospital 4 days later.¹ He was 43.

At our vigil on Tuesday 24th March, we were grateful and honoured to be joined by Rich’s partner Mel, and his brother and father, along with friends, neighbours, and witnesses. His family spoke very movingly about how much Rich loved living in the area, and how much it meant to him that he chose to be an organ donor—benefiting five Londoners on the waiting list for a transplant.

Our co-ordinator Jonathan remarked: “…too much of the machinery of London views tragedies like this as personal failings. We treat cycling and walking as something inherently dangerous when they’re not. We expect people to armour up to protect themselves from danger they should never be exposed to in the first place. Our streets and roads need to be safe, everywhere, and for everyone. And people should not have to die first to justify them being made safe.”

Other incidents of note

On 17th March—only 4 days after the publication of VZAP2—there was another hit and run on Centre Road/Woodford Road, thankfully only resulting in minor injuries. An 8 and a 16 year old were knocked off their bikes at the parallel zebra crossing of Woodford Road/Capel Road by an overtaking driver, on their phone, who didn’t stop. Frustratingly, there has still been no action from the Police on traffic cameras in this area. This is unacceptable.
On 20th June, a driver on Green Street crashed into a traffic light pole, pedestrians, and a learner driver’s car outside Upton Park station. Six people were taken to hospital.

Infrastructure

Three sections of the Romford Road cycleway are open in both directions, featuring new, more convenient inline crossings. Work on its first signalised junction at Green Street is nearing completion. Statutory consultation is underway on Woodgrange Road junction, easily the most challenging of the lot—which, in line with the other junctions on the scheme bar Green Street, will be a Dutch-style protected intersection with corner islands, straight-across crossings for all modes, and free left turns for cycling.

The Royal Docks Corridor is complete and has been signed as Cycleway 54, with an extension to City Hall/Kamal Chunchie Way and Royal Victoria making good progress and looking good for completion in the autumn; we understand that there are further extensions being investigated, including an upgrade to Canning Town Roundabout to provide a more direct, straight-across crossing for Cycleway 3 that would also lead to Cycle Future Route 8 on Barking Road. And the Westfield Avenue scheme continues apace, now signed as Cycleway 25 and with two exceptional new protected T-junctions now open for cycling traffic.

Long-awaited permeability improvements have been completed on Cycleway 16 at Honour Lea Avenue/Olympic Park Avenue junction. While progress on Cycle Future Route 7 has been disappointingly slow due to the presence of undocumented utilities, the realignment of C16 to follow the cycle track on Leyton Road appears imminent—removing the poor quality Leyton Ladder pavement cycling compromise that Newham Cyclists opposed in 2018. Work has also begun on the spur to Penny Brookes Street to connect with East Village and Montfichet Road (for Westfield and Stratford station.)

The pedestrian and cycle bridge at McGrath Road (connecting to the backstreet Stratford to Forest Gate C-link) has been refreshed with a new surface and more rain gardens. And a new priority crossing at Water Lane—with two upgraded mode filters—is nearly complete, although the priorities have not yet been reversed to their final configuration.

The works on the Beckton Corridor and Jack Dash Way are also finished.

The West Ham Park LTN survived call-in by the Council’s Oversight and Scrutiny Committee—where we were in attendance—and was converted to legal permanence on 3rd February 2026. This makes it significantly more difficult for anyone to remove this scheme and reopen the area’s streets to heavy traffic in future—an already unattractive proposition given TfL would require the council to pay back the TfL funding used for the scheme in the first place. Despite some loud controversy, West Ham Park LTN consistently received approximately 60% support from residents during the substantial consultation period, and also support from the head teacher at Park Primary School. Any claims that there has been a lack of consultation on this scheme are simply untrue.

There was also a brief glimmer of hope for the long-delayed Woodgrange/Capel LTN as another round of consultation took place in September and October 2025. Unfortunately any further progress on this was put on ice again in December 2025, likely in advance of the elections and change of Mayoral candidate.

Nine new Healthy School Streets went online in this committee period, covering one secondary school, one nursery, one children’s centre, and 10 primary schools. This brings the total number of schools under this scheme to 64, served by 47 separate school street zones.

Unfortunately there has been zero progress on the ground on any diversion for the Greenway. The Abbey Road diversion is now completely unviable—partly down to Cadent Gas works taking place in the Pond Road mini-LTN, and mainly because the closure of the Greenway now extends as far as Upper Road, necessitating a diversion via the hostile Plaistow Road. This will now continue until 2028 at the earliest, much later than Thames Water’s originally claimed completion date of Spring of this year. Thames Water risibly claims that their suggested diversion routes via Plaistow New Road or Manor Road are ‘suitable for cyclists’—this claim is untrue. Our “Greenway: Flushed Away!” campaign has been fighting for a safe diversion and has collected dozens of stories around Newham from people affected by the Greenway closure. We will continue to pressure the new Mayor and the Council to rapidly deliver Cycle Future Route 7 via Plaistow New Road to a high quality, and will continue to explore other avenues such as campaigning via Sir Stephen Timms MP to have the Greenway turned into a public right of way.

Despite these negative developments, Newham’s overall rapid delivery of cycling schemes has been noticed. The Council was awarded the most improved borough in London on the annual Healthy Streets Scorecard update in July 2025. Our parent charity, London Cycling Campaign, awarded Newham a “Highly Commended” at the LCC Awards, in the ‘Active and Inclusive Travel Award’ for ambitious councils who had delivered bold cycling schemes. It is quite something for Newham to be batting in the same league as Camden Council on active travel—something unthinkable even 5 years ago, let alone 10!

Political outlook

It is important that we continue to advocate for cycling for the next four years. The previous Mayor of Newham, Rokhsana Fiaz, did not stand for re-election, and this election was more competitive than any in our borough’s history, with no overall control of the full council. The Mayoralty was won by Labour’s Forhad Hussain, but with a significantly reduced majority and with a much smaller pool of Labour councillors to choose Cabinet members from.

Frustratingly much of the election campaign was dominated by attempts to re-introduce free car parking—despite the fact fewer than half of Newham households even have access to a car. Meanwhile the winning Mayor’s manifesto (never made available on Newham Labour’s website, but sent to Martin Warne’s forestgate.net blog) did not address the need to help people to switch away from driving at all; and a pledge that new cycle routes would be ‘signposted to avoid main roads where possible’ is 1990s-quality policy that will not survive contact with TfL’s quality criteria, nor with the basic geography of Newham.

We are, however, pleased to see that post-election there is a good deal of political support from across the spectrum—maybe more than the new Mayor’s political advisors realised—for protected cycleways and junctions on our main roads. It’s also clear that not all new councillors yet fully understand the current legal status of, for instance, Newham’s LTNs (all of which are legally permanent) or indeed why or how an LTN works. We aim to make a case to all parties in Council—Labour, the Newham Independents and the Greens—and to all councillors individually, to prioritise cycling and set a direction for a future where transport is cheaper, more accessible, and more just.

Committee 2025-2026

Our Management Committee for this period was elected at our 2025 AGM on Monday 28th April, 2025, at the Aston Mansfield Centre in Manor Park.

They are:

Position	Holder
Co-ordinator	Jonathan Rothwell
Deputy co-ordinator (with outreach portfolio)	Karen Flanagan
Treasurer	Bill Bremner
Secretary	Vacant (role fulfilled by Co-ordinators and others on Committee)
Rides co-ordinator	Vacant (role fulfilled by Co-ordinators and others on Committee)
Infrastructure Lead	Chris Kershaw
Non-Committee position: Fix Your Ride coordinator	Kerena Fussell

Karen Flanagan did not serve as Deputy Co-ordinator from 9th April to 12th May as she was a candidate in the May elections. As she was not elected on 7th May, she was reinstated to the Committee after the elections for the rest of the period.²

Steve Smith was originally elected as emeritus rides co-ordinator on Monday 28th April, but the administrative work was handled by the Co-ordinators.

Progress against 2025 objectives

Objectives from April 2025	Progress against objectives	What next
We must celebrate the wins, but keep the pressure on.	We celebrated the completion of the Royal Docks corridor and led rides using the new route We launched the “Flushed Away” campaign for a safe Greenway diversion when Thames Water announced that they would close the Greenway from Channelsea Bridge to Upper Road for at least 3 years. The financial and social impacts of the closure were evident from the messages we received from the public. Our Streets for Cycling election campaign – “build a safe cycling network in Newham” – generated 2 pledges and three messages of support from mayoral candidates	Celebrate the completion of Romford Road sections; Press for critical safety improvements
We must redouble our efforts to recruit more LCC members, and involve more of our members in our campaigning efforts (linked with representing the diversity of those who cycle in our Borough)	Thanks to Frames of Mind, we have built more capacity with ride leader and ride marshal training. We occasionally get passed contacts e.g. from Flyering days, but none of these people are active in Newham Cyclists. Thanks to Frames of Mind we have a popular Cycling Heritage ride; thanks to Anita we have a “Call the Midwife” ride; these themed rides have attracted a different crowd. We have participated in flyering activities for the LCC Mass Flyering Day	Formally invite these newly trained individuals to participate in campaigning and ride planning. Develop an onboarding offer for new contacts Plan other cultural rides to attract a more diverse following (we have a Ghandi themed ride in planning).
We must continue efforts to increase our footprint and serve more of Newham.	We usually start rides from ViewTube, but this year has seen rides starting from Central Park and West Ham Park. We are working to develop links with schools and have led rides involving Colegrave, Sandringham and Woodgrange. We have been in contact with the Green Schools Project, which we hope will lead to us working with Keir Hardie, St Joachims and St Lukes Ruscoe Road.	Identify ride starting points elsewhere in the borough (Requirements: space for cyclists to meet, and free toilets) Identify whether it might be possible to run other events in the south or centre of the borough.

Month by month

May 2025

10/5 Fix Your Ride at Woodgrange Market saw 17 bikes & took £98 in donations.
25/5 The London Cycling Festival saw Newham Cyclists lead rides from Central Park and West Ham Park to Victoria Park.

June 2025

8/6 Newham Cyclists led a ride around the Full Cycle QR code Heritage Trail.
10/6 For LCC’s mass flyering day, Dave, Daniel, Karen, and Jonathan handed out LCC flyers at Stratford High Street/Greenway in the morning, and at Canning Town in the evening.
11/6 Newham Cyclists was part of the stakeholder panel for Newham Council’s Corporate Director of Environment and Sustainable Transport recruitment process.
16/6 Barry Shonibare was hit by the driver of a Mercedes on Centre Road. He died 5 days later in hospital, aged 71.
30/6 Our monthly meeting included a ride along Romford Road to review progress on the cycleway sections.

July 2025

2/7 We supported a Woodcraft Folk ride to Hollow Ponds.
2/7 We submitted evidence to the Bill Committee dealing with the Bus Services Bill (no. 2), arguing against attempts to hijack the bill to ban bus stop bypasses and make building protected cycling infrastructure in England impossible.
6/7 We hosted Fix Your Ride at the Forest Gate Festival. We helped 15 people fix their cycles and took £145 in donations.
12/7 Fix Your Ride was at Woodgrange Primary School. We helped 15 people fix their cycles and took £107 in donations. £70 was donated to the school.
14/7 We held a vigil for Barry Shonibare at Capel Road/Woodgrange Road. We were joined by Barry’s friends and family members, and neighbours and local cyclists, including from our sister group in Redbridge and the CEO of LCC, Tom Fyans.
20/7 We led a ‘Beat the Bounds of Newham” ride, which was well attended.
23/7 Newham Cyclists attended “Changing the Narrative: ending the acceptance of road death in London” at City Hall. We heard and discussed the proposals by Caroline Russell AM for TfL’s Vision Zero Action Plan 2.
28/7 Our monthly meeting took place at the Good Hotel in Royal Victoria.

August 2025

6/7 A bonus August Fix Your Ride helped 14 people fix their cycles and took £121 in donations..

September 2025

13/9 We led a ride around the Full Cycle Heritage trail
13/9 At our regular Fix Your Ride at Woodgrange Market, we helped fix 16 bikes & took £95 in donations.
19/9 We attended a ride to celebrate the opening of the Royal Docks corridor.
21/9 A bonus Fix Your Ride took place in Capel Road, which became a Play Street for the day. We helped fix 16 bikes & took £105 in donations.
28/9 Our Cake Mountain ride was well attended and the cakes were fabulous, as usual!
29/9 Our monthly meeting was at Forest Lane Lodge and covered the Greenway closure, and dangerous junctions.
30/9 Greenway – Flushed Away! Campaign launched.

October 2025

1/10 We supported a Woodcraft Folk ride in Forest Gate.
4/10 LCC Ride Leader training at Forest Gate Library.
4/10 We supported a Woodcraft Folk ride to the Olympic Park.
11/10 At Woodgrange Market, we held our usual Fix Your Ride, fixing 18 bikes and receiving £144 in donations.
26/10 We ran a Feeder Ride to meet the Women’s Network Family ride at Marble Arch.
27/10 We held our monthly meeting on Zoom.

November 2025

8/11 We hosted our final Fix Your Ride of 2025 at Woodgrange Market, helping fix 11 cycles and receiving £71 in donations.
20/11 LCC’s Dangerous Junctions mapping was updated with the data set up to 2024, showing yet again that there is a cluster of 4 dangerous junctions (Cooks Road, Marshgate Lane, Warton Road, Carpenters Road) on Stratford High Street/TfL Cycleway 2. All of these junctions are unprotected for cycling; either the protected cycleway disappears in advance of them (at Warton and Carpenters Roads) or isn’t present at all (at Cooks Road and Marshgate Lane.)
29/11 We held a bike maintenance session, led by Arnold, with Ambition, Aspire, Achieve.

December 2025

1/12 We held our monthly meeting on Zoom.
12/12 We had an initial meeting over coffee with Labour Mayoral candidate, Forhad Hussain.³
14/12 Our Winter Social took place at Forest Lane Lodge.
16/12 At the LCC Annual Awards Ceremony, Newham Council were ‘Highly Commended’ in the Active and Inclusive Travel Award category for ambitious councils who have delivered bold cycling schemes in the last 12 months. Kerena Fussell won the “Hands of Friendship” award for reaching beyond her LCC group to collaborate with other organisations and community groups in the borough. Jess from Safer Streets Woodgrange was Highly Commended in the “Take Notice” category, for someone outside of the LCC network who has stood out from the crowd with their communications around an active travel campaign. Jonathan and Karen were awarded “Campaigners of the Year”, in part for Newham Cyclists’ continued work on the Greenway campaign.

January 2026

20/1 We attended the Overview and Scrutiny Committee meeting re: the call-in of the decision to make West Ham Park LTN permanent.
26/1 We held our monthly meeting on Zoom.
30/1 We met with Labour candidate Forhad Hussain and Cllr John Gray for a cycle ride around new infrastructure and areas of need.

February 2026

13/2 We finally purchased some Newham Cyclists Marshal vests, paid for from our funds.
18/2 We attended a walking tour, highlighting recent and ongoing public realm and active travel improvements in Newham, with Cllr John Morris and Newham officers.
21/2 LCC Ride Marshal Training in Forest Gate (funded by Frames of Mind’s ‘Share the Joy’ grant.)
23/2 We held our monthly meeting on Zoom, using Zoom registration for the first time.

March 2026

4/3 We had a walk and talk meeting at Newham Hospital on the Greenway with Areeq Chowdhury, the Green Mayoral candidate.
8/3 Our International Women’s Day Ride was based around influential women of Newham, past and present, and was well attended.
10/3 Richard Wisken was hit by a TfL 366 bus driver on Atlantis Avenue. He died in hospital on Saturday 14th March.
14/3 We held our first Fix Your Ride of the year at Woodgrange Market. We helped fix 17 cycles & took £188 in donations.
14/3 LCC Ride Marshal training in Forest Gate (funded by Frames of Mind’s ‘Share the Joy’ grant.)
17/3 We received a report of a hit and run on Woodford Road, where an 8 and a 16 year old were knocked off bikes by an overtaking driver on their phone who didn’t stop.
21/3 LCC Ride Leader Training in Forest Gate (funded by Frames of Mind’s ‘Share the Joy’ grant.)
24/3 Newham Cyclists and LCC held a short vigil on Atlantis Avenue to pay our respects to Rich Wisken. As well as eyewitnesses and neighbours, we were grateful to be joined by Rich’s partner Mel, and his father and brother.
26/3 LCC “Streets for Cycling” election campaign launched. Newham Cyclists had one ask for the mayoral candidates – will you build a safe connected cycle network in Newham?⁴
30/3 We held our monthly meeting on Zoom.

April 2026

Throughout April and into May we carried out 8 flyering exercises during the morning rush hour to advertise the Streets for Cycling campaign. Big thanks to Karen, Jonathan, Steve, Martin W, Rachel, Kerena, Bill, Martin H, and to Yahia Abaza from Tower Hamlets Wheelers who generously came over to help us out in one session! Thanks also to Sam, Bill, and others who distributed flyers locally.

11/4 We looked at 11 bikes at Fix Your Ride at Woodgrange Market, and took £70 in donations.
16/4 We received a pledge to our Streets for Cycling campaign from Areeq Chowdhury for the Newham Green Party.
17/4 We received another pledge to Streets for Cycling from Laura Willoughby for the Liberal Democrats.
18/4 We led a short ride for Friends of Colegrave primary school to the Olympic Park, where children then had a picnic and a ride around the park.
25/4 We led and marshalled the Safer Streets Woodgrange family ride to demand an end to rat-running and road danger in the Woodgrange and Capel area. The ride was attended by 120+ adults and children.
27/4 We held our monthly meeting on Zoom.

May 2026

2/5 We attended a community hustings co-organised by a loose coalition of community groups and charities including London Renters’ Union, Save Newham Libraries, The Magpie Project, and others. Unfortunately there was no Labour representative in attendance and Cllr Mirza (for the Newham Independents) left before our question could be asked, but we were able to ask Areeq Chowdhury (for the Greens) what he proposed to do to make cycling a safe and viable transport option everywhere and for everyone in Newham.
7/5 Election day. Forhad Hussain was declared winner of the Mayoral race on 8/5.
9/5 Fix Your Ride at Woodgrange Market saw 12 bikes, and took £84 in donations.
We ran two Frames of Mind heritage rides starting at West Ham Park on 17/5 and from Etty and Tyler on 23/5. Big thanks to Anita, Deborah, Shameem, Nasima and Charlie for marshalling!
31/5 Anita ran the “Call the Midwife” ride, a relaxed ride exploring Poplar in our neighbouring borough of Tower Hamlets.

June 2026

13/6 Fix Your Ride saw 14 bikes, plus one tube, and took £98 in donations. We were also able to teach 3 people how to pump up their own tyres using a track pump!
14/6 In partnership with our colleagues at LCC, we sent a briefing to all councillors, new and returning, explaining our position and why and how they should prioritise cycling.
20/6 A serious crash on Green Street put six people in hospital.
27/6 We had to cancel our Forest Gate Pride Ride due to a lack of volunteer availability.

Throughout the year

Jonathan, Karen, and Chris have been in regular contact with officers from Newham Council, including the Romford Road Project team.

We have been collecting stories year round for our “Greenway: Flushed Away” campaign. As yet we have been unable to post the videos we recorded last year but hope to do so soon. We finally received some contact from Thames Water in the past few weeks and hope to meet with them at some point in July.

A shoutout to the Frames of Mind team, Bo Chapman and Zoe Flynn, who this year successfully applied for “Share the Joy” funding from LCC to build Ride Marshal and Ride Leader capacity. They also completed Ride Leader training themselves and have led several rides around the Full Cycle Heritage Trail, which was researched and designed by Frames of Mind! Thanks both for this outstanding contribution.

Statistics

Promotional activities

We distributed approximately 178 flyers during LCC’s mass flyering day on 10 June 2025. Thanks to Dave, Daniel B, Karen, and Jonathan for their efforts.

Election Campaign

We took part in LCC’s “Streets for Cycling” campaign which emailed candidates for Mayor to ask them to build TfL’s four high priority cycle routes in Newham if elected.

88 people took the email action—putting us in 3rd place amongst all LCC borough groups—and our Committee made 30 contacts (emails, messages, in-person meetings) with the various party leaders throughout the election. This resulted in:

Formal pledges from Areeq Chowdhury (Green) and Laura Willoughby (Lib Dem)
Support for the campaign from Terri Bloore (Con)
Generally supportive but noncommittal messages from Forhad Hussain (Labour), Mehmood Mirza (Newham Independents), Bharath Swamy (Christian People’s Alliance)
No response whatsoever from Kamran Malik (Communities United Party) or Clive Furness (Reform UK)

We distributed hundreds of flyers over 7 flyering sessions across the borough. Thanks to Karen, Jonathan, Steve S, Yahia, Martin W, Rachel, Kerena, Bill, and Martin H for their efforts.

Fix Your Ride

Fix Your Ride dealt with around 150 cycles in the period May 2025-April 2026. This was a 30% increase on the figure for May 2024-April 2025. Many thanks to Kerena for coordinating this service, and to all who have volunteered at the stall, including Mark, Steve, Anita, Jonathan, Robin, Bill, Ken, Chris, Graham, Arnold, Daniel, and Ethan.

Newsletter and email discussion group

Our newsletter subscribers increased by 21% to 298 subscribers by May, at which point LCC noticed that some emails had inadvertently not been on the distribution list. We now have 351 subscribers, an increase of 41% since April 2025.

Our groups.io email discussion group fell by 4% to 107 subscribers.

Website

We have continued to see between 20-30 unique visitors to our website each day with periods where we have seen many more.

We have posted meeting readouts, news updates, and consultation responses. We have also posted two new instalments of News from the Streets. We have continued to update and refresh the website to improve usability and navigability, and will continue this in the coming months. We have also updated our list of local bike shops.

Our Greenway ‘map of pain’ received 4,705 views.

Social Media

We have regained access to our Facebook page and begun posting, albeit not as regularly as our other channels as we have not been able to link it directly to our Instagram account.

We ended the year with 1,426 Instagram followers, a 9.1% increase since December 2022. We have begun sharing Instagram Reels, short-form video content which appears to considerably increase our reach. This includes showcasing new cycling infrastructure and dangerous situations, and sensitive use of humour and memes to advocate for cycling. For instance, a reel showing the freshly-opened section H of Romford Road reached 7.2k accounts and received 276 likes and 20 shares.

We have continued to post on Bluesky, where we have 347 followers.

Finally, we decided in early 2026 to stop posting for good on X (formerly Twitter) and posted on 19th January to inform those following us there that we were no longer posting on the platform. There are many reasons behind this, including:

Developments in late 2025 and early 2026 around the capability of the site’s Grok chatbot to generate sexualised deepfake images, including some that depicted children.
A serious issue with misinformation, disinformation, and hateful content on the site. An investigation by Sky News in November 2025 has shown that X’s recommender algorithm prioritises extreme and fascist content.
A continued decline in engagement. We and our neighbouring LCC groups did not get anywhere near the levels of engagement we used to get on pre-Elon Musk Twitter.

While we acknowledge that many politicians and journalists are still on X, we feel that staying on the website would not help us in any way to get our point across & promote cycling in Newham, and London more widely. We had no desire to produce content for X which would become a launchpad in the comments and quote-posts for misinformation or disinformation.

Instead, we found we get a much wider reach on Instagram for general promotion of cycling and cycling schemes, and that for more “nerdy” or technical topics people will contact us on Bluesky or via old-fashioned email. We have also had more success contacting politicians directly via email or in-person.

Organisations we have collaborated with

We supported our parent charity, London Cycling Campaign, and our sister LCC groups in neighbouring boroughs, by promoting important campaigns and consultations throughout the year, and supporting the London Festival of Cycling. We have also contributed to infrastructure mapping to support the Healthy Streets Scorecard cycleway data.

We also campaigned in partnership with:

Safer Streets Woodgrange
Save West Ham Park LTN
Better Streets for Newham

We have supported rides for the following groups:

Ambition, Aspire, Achieve
Frames of Mind
Friends of Colegrave Primary
Sandringham Primary School
Woodcraft
Woodgrange Primary School

We also provided logistical support and submitted a question to the community hustings organised by a group of local organisations including the London Renters’ Union Newham branch, Magpie Project, Save Newham Libraries, and others. It is likely this group will coalesce into a wider community coalition in future.

Suggested Objectives for 2026-27

Critical safety improvements delivered:
1. Greenway diversion made safe by the next AGM.
2. Visible progress on the dangerous junctions on Stratford High Street.
3. Extension of protected cycleways into Newham from Centre Road as far as Capel Road junction and compliance issue meaningfully addressed.
4. Meaningful understanding of a future vision on Atlantis Avenue to make this street and area safer.
An outreach programme aiming for a programme of shorter, themed rides & using the existing infra (cycleways and LTNs) with a view to involving more people in campaigning.
Run more rides and events in the south and east of Newham.

Acknowledgments

The Committee would like to thank everyone who has helped us this year:

Fix Your Ride – Kerena, Mark, Steve, Anita, Jonathan, Robin, Bill, Ken, Chris, Graham, Arnold, Daniel, Ethan…
Ride Leaders and Marshals – Zoe, Bo, Deborah, Anita, Robin, Steve, Ken, John M, Daniel B, Caroline, Lisa, Karl, Robin, Jess, Amal, Jeremy, Nasima, Shameem, Bill, Daniel, Diane, Chris K, Gönül, Chau, Jonathan, Karen, Bill, Michael, Matt, Camilla, Charlie…
Campaigners and supporters – Kerena, Arnold, Jess, Sam, Farah, Martin H, Martin W, Daniel B, Bill, Steve S, Rachel, Matthew, Steve L, Hugh, Sharon…
Newham Councillors and officers
Anyone who has come to our meetings, attended our rides, engaged with discussion in our group, engaged with our campaigns

NC Annual Report 2026 Download

We understand from Rich’s family that he actually died four days later, on Saturday 14th March, rather than Sunday 15th March as reported in the press and the Police appeal for witnesses. ↩︎
Newham Cyclists, as part of a registered charity, is politically neutral in all elections. Elected officials and candidates in forthcoming elections cannot serve on our Committee, since this could create a conflict of interest. They are, of course, welcome to be members of our group and LCC, to attend meetings and vote as an ordinary member, and to campaign on topics of interest to the group—as long as this is in a personal capacity and not combined with campaigning for votes in the election. ↩︎
Newham Cyclists is politically neutral and independent. We did not endorse any candidate (and legally can’t, as a branch of a registered charity.) Instead we report their policies and responses to our asks, to allow our members and supporters to decide for themselves. ↩︎
More detail on our methodology is available on our website. Candidates were also welcome to approach us by email to respond to our asks. We reserved the right not to seek a view from minor or “fringe” candidates who advocate for policies opposed to Newham Cyclists’ or LCC’s charitable objectives and values (for instance, those espousing views that are clearly racist, or peddling conspiracy theories.) ↩︎