Giving back to our local community

Ryebridge supports various charities in our hometown of Luton - recognising they are the lifeblood of the local community - in a bid to improve wellbeing and address inequalities within society.

In summer 2024 Ryebridge founder Daniel Coyle and managing director Sean Scully got on their bikes to ride for our charity partners the Luton Foodbank and the East Anglian Air Ambulance.

They joined a gruelling 220-mile charity bike ride across the Republic of Ireland which saw 29 participants pedal from Dublin to Dingle Bay, organised by London Luton Airport to help these local good causes.

The company proudly sponsored the Child of Courage category in this year’s Luton’s Best Awards, recognising any young person up to the age of 18 who has put themselves in danger to help or save the life of another, has battled against the odds to overcome adversity in their personal life, or has made a stand to improve the lot of themselves or others.

Also in 2024 Ryebridge was instrumental in ensuring that two major events in Luton were able to take place.

In May our team gave up their time over two days to help make Stockwood Park safe and accessible for one of the most exciting weekends ever for Luton. Following torrential rain it looked as though the Radio One Big Weekend would be cancelled, until we repaired the fire escape route, set down new flooring, completed various remedials around the site and helped make improvements to accessible parking areas.

Then in October a team from the company spent a whole repairing around 50 potholes on a section of the Luton Hoo estate used for the Luton Runfest’s half-marathon race around the town on Sunday.

Without our help, the popular community event was in danger of being cancelled as the course would have been considered unsafe.

Ryebridge is also proud to support Woodlands Secondary School, a Luton-based special needs school for students aged between 11-18 years old.

The school caters for students with severe learning difficulties or profound and multiple learning difficulties, many of whom also have additional complex needs including autistic spectrum disorder, epilepsy, physical or sensory impairments.

Around 18 months ago teacher Selina Young attended a Climate Action Teachers Champion (CATCh) programme, Luton’s flagship initiative aimed at helping teachers and local schools access resource and support in delivering and embracing sustainability.

CATCh has been specifically designed to help teachers embed climate change and sustainability within their learning programmes, and to help school leads and senior leadership to understand how they can access local resources, funding and support to help launch their school Climate Change Action Plan.

Following this course, and with consultation from the school’s Eco Council, she decided to create a sensory garden in the school grounds to provide a calm space to help students regulate away from the school environment.

The aim was to create a quiet, peaceful and pretty area incorporating elements which are visually appealing, smell nice and potentially even taste good as well.

With a bursary from the course she bought a wooden structure to provide shelter, but needed the area to be wheelchair accessible as well, only to receive quotes for groundworks in the region of £4-5K, which made the project impossible to finance.

Fortunately the school’s careers department partners with London Luton Airport, who put them in touch with Ryebridge, and managing director Sean Scully went to Woodlands to see first-hand what was needed: “I found the visit quite inspirational - the enthusiasm and passion for the students was quite overwhelming and we will be delighted to help complete the groundworks for them free of charge.”

A team of apprentices from Ryebridge – supervised by project manager Don Wall - carried out all the necessary work on the project free of charge.