The Beryl Bikes pull out of the east Dorset area has been “a mess” which has left Dorset Council embarrassed, according to the councillor who oversaw the original contract.
Cllr Ray Bryan, who headed the highways and transport portfolio under the previous Conservative administration when the bike scheme was being set up, says it was bad publicity to see the bike hire scheme come to an end just weeks after the council had finished spending millions of pounds on new cycleways in the area.
Said Cllr Bryan (St Leonards and St Ives, Con) “I can’t tell you how damaging this has been in the east Dorset area – people can’t understand why this council has spent millions on providing cycleways and within weeks of us having finished the cycleways Beryl withdrew the service.
“Can you imagine how that appears to residents? They look at it and say: ‘was this a waste of money, how did we get into this place?’ We need to learn some lessons and discuss how we’ll never get into this position again.”
Cllr Bryan was also critical of a gap of several weeks before officers told councillors that Beryl Bikes intended to pull out of the Wimborne, Ferndown, Colehill, West Moors and West Parley areas – and says Dorset Council was wrong to rely on information from BCP Council about the viability of the scheme at the start of the contract, rather than carry out its own checks.
Councillors were told that while the company looked at population figures before setting up the east Dorset schem, the age profile of the area appeared not to have been investigated – the area having one of the highest elderly populations in the country, while the bike scheme users are predominately under 40.
A Dorset Council scrutiny committee was told that while Beryl Bikes use per day in Weymouth, Portland and Dorchester was almost 2 for each machine, while in the area they pulled out of it had only been 0.4. In Upton and Corfe Mullen the current figure is 0.6.
Committee chairman Cllr Noc Lacey-Clarke said it appeared that the council were “rewarding bad behaviour” when it let the company move bikes Dorset Council taxpayers had funded to other areas where it continues to earn profits from them.
“We are now letting them use (the bikes) at no cost, to make their private company more money on assets we bought as Dorset Council,” he said.
The east Dorset scheme was initiated with a contract being signed in January 2022 although only got underway in August 2022 with 122 bikes, operating from 47 bays across the area. In November 2024, Beryl Bikes emailed the council to say that at the three-year break point in the contract, in January 2025, they would be pulling out of the area because it was not viable.
The decision was not told to the Cabinet member responsible until December 16th, the information not shared with local councillors until January 3rd 2025 with an online meeting held about the situation on January 6th.
Council officer, Christopher Whitehouse, the project manager who worked on implementation of scheme told councillors that, on reflection, councillors should have been told of the Beryl Bikes decision earlier, with the time being used by officers to try and negotiate a solution, the situation having been delayed because of the Christmas break.
He said, after negotiations Beryl Bikes asked for a £14,000 a month subsidy from the Council to continue to east Dorset scheme, which the authority decided was not good value for money.
Councillors heard that the scheme was paid for with £240,000 the council had from a Community Infrastructure Levy fund and £23,000 from a Transforming Cities fund with £224,000 coming from Beryl Bikes.
Beryl Bikes takes all the revenue from the scheme, less a 5% profit share to Dorset Council, although the figures have not been made available.
Cllr Bryan said he wanted alternative provision looked at in the future and any new contracts having a fallback plan in place from the outset.
Wimborne councillor Shane Bartlett said the Beryl Bikes decision had been “hugely disappointing” and had not helped commuters heading to and from the Ferndown industrial estate for work, putting extra traffic on the Canford Bottom roundabout.
The meeting heard that Dorset Council has been examining other models for e-bike and scooter contracts with an interest in the Southampton area which uses a ‘docking station’ system rather than areas where bikes are often on the ground.