Last week, as happens quite a lot on the Bike blog, we lamented a problem and wondered about a solution. In a slightly unexpected move, someone then emailed me one.

My post about the best ways of ensuring your bike is safe overnight touched on the difficulties when you can’t, or don’t want to keep it indoors, and where you haven’t got a lockable shed or garage, a theme continued in quite a few comments.

Unknown to me, on the very same day a local council was announcing its own particular answer to the problem. Lambeth, a local authority in south London, has just installed its very first public bike boxes, as shown above.

The idea is, apparently, that locals with nowhere indoors to keep a bike pay £5 a month to rent a reserved spot inside one of the boxes, which appear to be a fairly standard set of bike racks with a lockable roll-top cover. In theory, thieves will be put off by having to noisily wrestle off the cover before even getting to work on the locks inside.

via The bike box – security at home update | Environment | guardian.co.uk.