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@clairethered
Hi everyone - bit of advice please!
I have recently started working for a charity called The Bike Project which fixes up old bikes, then donates them to asylum seekers and refugees.
Our bikes come from a number of sources: individual donations, local councils clearing abandoned bikes from public spaces, landlords/housing associations, and so on. We currently also have a relationship with the Metropolitan Police, who give us stolen bikes in cases where their owners could not be located. Many bikes are registered in case of theft. When the Met passes on their bikes, they have been de-registered.
However, we are concerned that some of the other bikes that we give out could still be registered to their owners, despite having been abandoned or willingly donated. The last thing we want is for one of our refugees or asylum seekers to be found riding a bike that is reported either stolen or registered to another owner.
I want to find out what our responsibility is regarding checking whether the bikes are stolen or not – and how we’d go about doing it.
Does anyone have a route, or even better a personal contact, where I could find out what procedures to implement to make sure both we and the beneficiaries of our bikes are operating within the law?
Many thanks!
Claire