Cabinet is asked on 22 September to release £1,004,690 for a Hemel e-bike hire scheme. The council's own survey found 54% of those who replied would not use it.
Update, 24 September 2026: Cabinet approved all four recommendations on 22 September. The contract was awarded to the preferred bidder named only in the Part II report, £1,004,690 of Core CIL funding was released, and operational decisions were delegated to the Assistant Director Planning. The decision is effective from 1 October and can be called in until then. Full report: Hemel e-bike contract awarded, call-in ends 1 October.
Dacorum’s Cabinet is asked on Tuesday 22 September to hand £1,004,690 of developer levy money to an electric bike hire scheme for Hemel Hempstead, and to award the contract to run it.
The figure is not a rounded estimate. It is the exact sum of Community Infrastructure Levy money officers want released, set out in the report published for the meeting. A further £500,000 comes from Herts IQ, the enterprise zone covering Maylands.
Two things in that report are worth reading before Tuesday. The council’s own survey of the idea found that most of the people who answered it would not use the scheme. And the scrutiny committee’s chairman had reservations about the scale and the cost, raised at a meeting the public was excluded from.
What Cabinet is being asked to approve
The recommendations are:
- award the contract to the highest-scoring bidder, whose name is in a confidential Part II report
- release £1,004,690 of Core CIL funding
- note the £500,000 from Herts IQ
- delegate decisions on the rollout and running of the scheme to the Assistant Director for Planning, in consultation with the Portfolio Holder for Place
The contract runs for three years, with an option to extend by a further two, one year at a time. Mobilisation is planned to take place before 31 March 2027.
What the scheme is meant to do
The equalities pre-screener published with the report is the clearest public statement of the route. It describes a fully electric bike hire scheme “connecting Maylands Business Park to Hemel Hempstead train station and other key destinations” (appendix A).
Herts IQ describes the same thing as “a new e-bike hire network connecting Hemel Hempstead station, the town centre, and Maylands Business Park” (Hertfordshire Futures). Maylands is “currently home to more than 650 businesses that employ over 20,000 people”, on Herts IQ’s own figures.
The contract covers the bikes, the docking infrastructure and geo-fencing, an IT system, cleaning and maintenance, customer services, charging and moving bikes around the town, marketing, and consultancy on developing the scheme. The bikes and docks will be council-owned assets. The report says a significant proportion of the bays will sit on council land.
How big it will be
The number of bikes is not stated in Tuesday’s report. It was fixed in the tender specification agreed in February, which offered bidders three scope options:
| Option | Maximum contract value over three years | Indicative minimum |
|---|---|---|
| Option 1 | £1,050,000 | 130 e-bikes, 26 docking locations |
| Option 2 | £1,300,000 | 170 e-bikes, 34 docking locations |
| Option 3 | £850,000 | Not stated in the report |
Which option the winning bid took, and what the contract is actually worth, are both in the Part II report, which the public cannot see. The report also says the full estimated project cost, including costs outside the contract, was set out in the February Cabinet paper and is not restated here.
The survey the council commissioned
Before going to tender the council ran a two-week “snap survey” in September 2025, promoted to local businesses, their staff and users of Hemel Hempstead and Apsley stations. It drew 178 responses.
Of those 178 people:
- 33.71% said they would use the scheme
- 11.80% said they might
- 54.49% said they would not
The report presents this as progress, and on its own terms it is. The same question in the SmartGo Maylands Employee Travel Survey, run between July and September 2023, got 22.2% positive, 15.2% unsure and 62.6% not interested.
Two other figures are worth knowing. 66.67% of respondents had never used any bike hire scheme, pedal or electric. And 61.90% of the 168 who answered the question live in Hemel Hempstead, with 22.02% working there.
The council calls this “indicative data” and says a broader public engagement exercise is planned as the project progresses, to inform demand modelling and scheme design. That exercise has not happened yet. The contract award comes first.
The scrutiny committee’s chairman had reservations
The award went to the Strategic Planning and Environment Overview and Scrutiny Committee on 1 September 2026. Cabinet’s report says the committee “supported the award of contract”, then adds one sentence:
The Committee Chair had reservations around the scale and cost of the scheme.
The committee’s chairman is Councillor Alan Anderson, and he is not among those recorded absent on 1 September. That single sentence in the Cabinet report is the only public record of what he said, because the committee resolved to exclude the public before it discussed the item. The published minutes for 1 September list the e-bike scheme as item 12 and say only: “Please see Part 2 Minutes for details” (draft minutes). The Part 2 minutes are not published.
Where the money comes from, and the risks officers list
The £1,004,690 is Core Community Infrastructure Levy money: a charge on new development, pooled by the council and released for infrastructure projects. The Section 151 officer’s statement in the report is short and unqualified. There are “sufficient CIL balances to invest the £1m in this community scheme”, and costs will be reported to scrutiny quarterly.
The risks officers name are:
- the exit strategy at the end of the contract
- contractual risk
- low uptake, “resulting in reputational and financial damage”
- sustained and deliberate criminal damage at a level that stops the scheme operating
- vandalism
The report also flags legal work still to do. Traffic Regulation Orders and Public Space Protection Orders will need reviewing or preparing, and the cycle bays will need planning permission or licences. That is a separate process, with its own consultation, for each bay that needs one.
The winning bidder holds £10m employer’s liability, £5m public liability and £2m professional indemnity insurance, checked by the council’s insurance team.
How the contract was awarded
Procurement ran as a Competitive Flexible Tender between 24 March and 28 April 2026, under the Procurement Act 2023. Bids were scored 80% on quality and 20% on price, with minimum quality thresholds. The report says all bids met the specification and the highest-scoring one is recommended.
The £500,000 from Herts IQ was announced on 26 March 2026, as one of nine projects sharing £1.8m from the enterprise zone’s Growth Investment Fund. The e-bike scheme took the largest single share of that £1.8m.
What it means for you
- The decision is on Tuesday 22 September, 7.30pm, in Conference Room 2 at The Forum. Cabinet meetings take public statements and questions under the council’s public participation rules, and the agenda is published. Contact Democratic Support on 01442 228209.
- If you want to know who will run it, you cannot yet. The operator’s name, the contract value and the number of bikes are all in the confidential Part II report. They would normally become public once the contract is signed.
- The nearest thing to a start date is 31 March 2027, the date by which mobilisation is planned. No launch date has been published.
- If a bike bay is proposed near you, watch for a planning application or a traffic order. Our planning news page tracks new applications in the borough each week, and street closures and orders are on our roadworks and travel page.
- This money is not council tax. It is levy money paid by developers and it can only be spent on infrastructure. Council tax bands and what they fund are on our council tax page.
The scheme’s recommendations, if approved, hand rollout decisions to an officer rather than to councillors. That means the bay locations, the pricing and the operating rules will not come back to a public meeting unless the portfolio holder asks for them.
Sources
- Dacorum Borough Council, Cabinet report, “Hemel Hempstead e-Bike Hire Scheme, Award of Contract”, 22 September 2026, for the £1,004,690, the £500,000, the recommendations, the tender options, the survey figures, the procurement dates and method, the risks, the legal and insurance detail, the S151 statement and the chairman’s reservations.
- Appendix A, Equality Impact Assessment pre-screener, 19 August 2026, for the route description and the accessibility mitigations.
- Cabinet agenda, 22 September 2026, for the venue, time and the restricted Part II enclosures.
- Strategic Planning and Environment Overview and Scrutiny, draft minutes, 1 September 2026, for the exclusion of the public and the Part 2 reference.
- Dacorum Borough Council committee membership, for the committee’s chairman.
- Hertfordshire Futures, “Herts IQ invests £1.8m”, 26 March 2026, for the £500,000 allocation and the network description.
- Herts IQ, Maylands Business Park, for the 650 businesses and 20,000 jobs.
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