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Police, Ambulance, Fire Brigade...and Blood Bikes. Britain’s 4th emergency service depends on motorcycles

Remember a few years ago when the AA ran an ad campaign claiming that they were the ‘4th Emergency Service’? Well, here’s a far better candidate – free at the point of use, often on call 24/7 and it saves lives – Blood Bikes.

Blood Bike groups have come a long way since the early 1960s, when Londoner Margaret Ryerson set up a group of volunteer riders to transport blood to hospitals around the capital. They used their own machines, wore their own kit and (in those early days) even paid for their own petrol. There’s a short film on Youtube (where else?) circa 1964, showing a young chap dropping the lawn mower to leap onto his Speed Twin and scoot through the outskirts of London with a leather holdall of urgent medical supplies bungied (yes) to the rack.

Things are very different now. Not only are Blood Bikes more professional, with 350 fleet bikes on tap, top quality riding kit and every rider with an advanced qualification, but they are busier than ever. Just over ten years ago, all the Blood Bikes groups in the UK did about 24,000 jobs between them. By 2016 the number of runs they did had doubled. Five years on, the effects of Covid, lockdown and an increasingly stretched NHS saw the workload rocket to over 145,000, of which nearly 5000 were emergencies. Over 600 busy A&E hospitals, Air Ambulances and laboratories make use of the service, which delivers not just blood but platelets, plasma, human tissue samples, breast milk and surgical instruments. They can even mount a kidney dialysis machine onto the back of a bike and deliver that wherever it’s needed.

Little wonder that the number of groups and volunteers has also ballooned. Back in 2008, the five groups then in operation got together to form the Nationwide Association of Blood Bikes (NABB), whose job it is to help spread best practice, promote the service and make sure that every part of the NHS knows where their local group is. There are 32 groups now, all affiliated to the NABB, plus four more in Ireland, staffed by over 4400 unpaid volunteers. Most groups have been set up in the last decade, but the oldest (Yeovil Freewheelers) celebrates its 45th birthday this year. And just to underline the usefulness of all this work, Freewheelers alone saved the NHS £200,000 in transport costs in 2022.

The Cost of Care

Fund raising is crucial, as every group has to be self-financing, and none of them take any income from the NHS. Given the level of professionalism expected (all groups now have formal agreements with hospitals on the service they are expected to deliver), running these groups isn’t cheap, and Yeovil Freewheelers reckons it costs about £5000 a year to run and maintain just one bike. “Local dealers do the servicing, and will often give a good price, because of who it’s for,” says NABB’s publicity officer Kirsty Lawrence. “Covid was a bit of a double-edged sword for us, because not only did demand rocket but we couldn’t get out and fundraise. Loads of people on furlough wanted to volunteer to ride, but they couldn’t get their advanced riding certificate because of lockdown....BP provided free fuel over lockdown, which was a significant help because we couldn’t fundraise but were covering more miles than usual.”

So the Blood Bike fundraisers are crucial, especially as all of those 350 bikes have been purchased by the groups themselves. Rattling a tin outside Sainsburys, organising a coffee morning or touting for corporate sponsorship might not be as glamorous as riding a blue-lighted bike, but it’s just as vital. Other volunteers act as controllers, taking calls from hospitals and sending riders out to do the job, or help with admin or maintaining equipment.

But of course, it’s the riders you want to know about. All have to come with an advanced qualification, and the volunteer has to organise this themselves – it can be any one of IAM, ROSPA, the Police or Forces advanced certificates plus of course the BMF’s Blue Riband (gold). Anyone working towards their piece of paper can join the local group as a non-rider, helping out in other ways until they’re able to get out on the road. “Quite a few decide to step forward after having been involved in accidents themselves,” says Kirsty, “and volunteering is their way of giving something back. They also have the option of riding a range of different bikes, which is nice to do...”

The shifts vary between the groups and how busy they are. Northumbria does a full shift of 12 hours (with breaks of course), a half-shift or a four-hour run which consists of regular deliveries. Some groups have riders officially on call for up to 72 hours. “As we’re often busy,” says Kirsty, “they can be out on the road as soon the shift starts.”

Which Bike?

Now then, the bikes. Some groups still use the riders’ own bikes, but most seem to buy their own fleet machines, and what they choose is up to them. “Different groups have different preferences,” says Kirsty Lawrence. “Some people insist on shaft drive, others don’t like it. A lot of our riders love Pan Europeans, and some used to run Triumph Trophys.” Naturally there’s a good selection of BMW RTs and at least two groups (Blood Bikes Scotland and the London & Surrey group) are using electric Zero SR/Ss.

By far the most popular bike is the (now out of production) Yamaha FJR1300. So suitable was it for Blood Bike work that the NABB commissioned its testing and verification to Home Office standards, so it’s virtually to Police spec, with the addition of a specially made large rack and suitable graphics. Over 200 FJRs were bought by the groups, and they must have been happy with them because NABB has put the MT-07 and 09 through the same approval process – the first of these should be going into service as you read this.

All of these bikes cover a lot of miles and Northumbria group’s fleet of 13 bikes and six cars clocked up 275,000 miles in 2022, thanks to the big geographical area it covers. They tend to get sold on at 80-100,000 miles, so they’ve all seen a bit of life, but not all of those miles will have been in full emergency mode. In fact, across all the groups only a minority of call outs are actual emergencies – most are routine and all groups have regular runs to keep the clinics, smaller hospitals and air ambulances topped up with supplies.

Whatever machines Blood Bikes use, and whoever rides them, it’s clear that they are an increasingly essential service, helping the NHS through very difficult times, saving money, lives and resources purely through volunteer effort. ‘Fourth Emergency Service’ is about right.

www.bloodbikes.org.uk