Chair’s Welcome
Welcome to Shropshire Staffordshire & Cheshire Blood Bikes (SSCBB)
When on duty and the phone rings, there is a rush of anticipation for the journey about to be made and the impact it may have on someone’s life. It may be taking urgent samples to a specialist laboratory, blood units from a blood bank to a local hospital, milk from a donor’s house to a neo-natal ward or a relay involving several riders to get from one end of the country to another. SSCBB undertakes over 5500 urgent deliveries like these each year in support of the NHS and closely related organisations.
First formed by a small group of friends in 2014, by early 2022 we had made 30,000 urgent deliveries and were regularly supporting around 30 NHS locations across the three counties. Our charity is now one of the largest blood bike groups in the country, operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week using our own fleet of 17 specialist motorcycles and provides all our services absolutely free of charge and entirely funded by donations.
Our generous donors enable us to keep the service running, whether it’s by dropping spare cash into a collecting bucket, buying our merchandise, raising money for us at a community event or through personal sponsorship, we are grateful for every sum received. We have also been lucky enough to receive several large donations from supporting companies, charitable groups and individuals.
SSCBB is honoured to have 2 joint patrons, the Lord Lieutenants of Shropshire and Staffordshire. We also proudly hold the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service (QAVS) presented to us in 2018.
Our 350+ members are the lifeblood of our organisation; we are all volunteers and cover a wide variety of roles. As well as riders, controllers, and duty managers we have volunteer roles as speakers, fundraisers, trainers, assessors, admin & IT specialists, bike managers, publicity, merchandising and more. If you would like to join our friendly team and help out in any way please get in touch. We recognise that people have busy lives and so are grateful for whatever support you can give, many of our roles can be undertaken from the comfort of your own armchair at times to suit you.
I hope you find our website useful.
Jeremy Cartwright
Chair
What people say about us
“The blood bikes are vital to getting our life saving faecal transplants to critically ill patients with C. dificile infection”
Professor Peter Hawkey, FMT Service Lead, PHE Public Health Laboratory Birmingham
“On a regular basis we need to transport samples urgently, between Shrewsbury and Telford, and also from here in Shropshire to Birmingham and beyond. In the past it has been quite difficult, out of hours, to get those samples moving quickly, so it has made a huge difference to us to be able to rely on blood bikes to get those samples moving for us.”
Debbie Jones, Support Services Care Group Director Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust
“The voluntary service the blood bikes offer us has been instrumental in widening the scope of our FMT service across the country and ensuring costs are a low as possible for the NHS”
Dr Vicki McCune, FMT Service Manager PHE Public Health Laboratory Birmingham
“There is certainly times when the quicker we can get results back, the better the outcome for the patient, so blood bikes are helping to save lives and, at the same time, they are saving the NHS lots of money”
Debbie Jones, Support Services Care Group Director Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust
“We are so grateful to the volunteer riders who give up their time to courier blood products and urgent samples for testing between our hospitals and the regional NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) centre in Birmingham. Every minute counts when it comes to helping seriously-ill and injured patients and being able to call on the blood bikes round the clock helps us to provide safe, effective treatment and transfusions.”
Paula Gardener, Chief Nurse Burton Hospital Trust (covering Burton, Lichfield and Tamworth)
“We very much appreciate all of their efforts and the support they give both SaTH and the wider NHS.”
Debbie Jones, Support Services Care Group Director Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust
Want to help?
