Is this the end of Lime Bike Leg?
Plus: Mudchute City Farm is saved and Angela Rayner brands Asif Aziz's Criterion Capital "incredibly vindictive" over its treatment of tenants.
It’s just over a year since London Centric started investigating “Lime bike leg”, the spate of severe injuries that Londoners were suffering at the hands of the rental company’s e-bikes.
I’d been working on a story about how the company is bringing a safer bike design to London’s streets in the coming weeks – but this morning the company just went ahead and publicly announced it.
So here’s a short midweek update on what you need to know before hopping on an e-bike this summer – plus London Centric talks to Angela Rayner, the favourite to be the next prime minister, on why she is criticising London landlord Asif Aziz.
An end to Lime bike leg?
In early 2025 the London Centric inbox was flooded with X-rays of shattered legs from members of the public who’d suffered severe injuries while riding a Lime bike.
What initially appeared to be a series of unfortunate accidents began to reveal a pattern as our investigation pieced it together. Many of the Lime customers claimed that the company’s ubiquitous Gen 4 bicycle had a design flaw: the heavy metal bar at the centre of the bike that, when someone fell sideways, would focus all of the vehicle’s 35kg weight on a single location on their leg as it pressed against the tarmac.
This thesis was backed by Mr Jaison Patel, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon who treated some of the victims. He was critical of Lime’s bike design: “It ends up creating a pivot point. You’re causing a bend in the bone with the heavy force.” We reported that doctors had started dubbing it “Lime bike leg” and the national media picked up the term. The issue was raised in the House of Lords and transport ministers said they had been reading our coverage.
Now, it seems Lime might have a solution. They’re bringing an entirely new type of rental e-bike to London’s streets from next month, with smaller wheels and the middle bar removed.
The company began trialling the new bike design in Paris and other cities around the world last year, with London Centric readers on their holidays regularly sending in updates. Officially, the company has not linked it to safety concerns. Yet the feedback we’ve received from readers who’ve tried it is that they feel much more stable on the new version of the bike.
“The big improvement is that the battery is moved behind the seatpost and so the downtube wouldn’t put so much pressure on the legs in a crash.”
Another reader said:
“Still seemed super heavy but the battery has been moved - now under the seat, so centre of gravity presumably changed.”
Lime is only going to be introducing a few thousand of the new bikes in the UK at first, running as a parallel fleet to its existing model while the transition is made. But the company has been emphasising the new bike’s “low step-through frame for stability and accessibility” and potential appeal to both women and older riders.
Lime’s approach to growing as fast as possible ahead of a planned stock market listing has transformed cycling in London, getting hundreds of thousands of people onto bikes for the first time and opening up parts of the city. It’s also seen the company accused of ignoring local concerns, swamping markets and cutting corners in the dash for growth. Aside from the design of the bikes, keeping them maintained is a major challenge – with safety-critical parts often missing.
Cycling is far safer and healthier than driving but there have been lingering concerns about the choices made by an unregulated private transport company. As things stand Lime is not accountable to any external checks when it comes to the safety of its vehicles or their maintenance regime. Lime has already defended its safety record, even as it faces an ever-growing number of lawsuits over shattered bones.
The company has established itself as the dominant player in London e-bikes and has recently looked to cement this by launching a £6.99 a month subscription option that offers unlimited rides of up to 20 minutes for a flat £1.70, below the price of a London bus fare.
Central government is expected to eventually give London-wide power to regulate rental e-bikes to Transport for London but that’s a couple of years away. This is creating a battle to grab as much market share as possible before the regulations come in, with Lime, Forest, and Voi battling each other for the right to operate in each London borough. At the moment we know so little about how Lime operate that we don’t even know how many bikes they have.
Some of the people we interviewed for our original investigation have never truly been able to return to work and are facing a lifetime with limbs propped up with metal plates. Many of the people with life-changing injuries are still hoping for payouts from the company. If the new design starts to dominate, it might free up space in the capital’s A&E wards.
Editor’s note: Lime invited some media outlets to a launch event for the new bike on Tuesday night, where they were able to put questions to the company’s executives. Lime did not invite anyone from this publication.
If you have intel on Lime’s lobbying activities with local councils and central government, we’d love to hear from you. You can get in touch in confidence.
Angela Rayner brands Asif Aziz’s Criterion Capital “incredibly vindictive” over mass evictions
On Tuesday former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner visited Croydon to meet some of the hundreds of residents facing eviction from their homes at the hands of Asif Aziz’s Criterion Capital.
She joined Croydon Labour mayoral candidate Rowenna Davis to brand Aziz’s company “disgusting and disgraceful” and said Criterion “should not be landlords” due to the “incredibly vindictive” way they treat tenants.
Criterion has issued hundreds of no-fault eviction notices to private tenants ahead of the Renters’ Rights Act, as first revealed by London Centric, with the apparent intention of replacing them with more profitable temporary accommodation units.
“I don’t care that this landlord’s nose is being put out”
Rayner met some of those losing their homes at a surgery hosted by local MP Sarah Jones. Speaking outside, she said: “There’s a lady in there crying in front of a young child, worried about what’s going to happen to her future. Somebody on a spreadsheet has decided ‘we don’t want you anymore’. This is their home.”
She said she had little time for Asif Aziz’s insistence that Criterion is acting within the letter of the law and that media coverage is unfair: “I don’t care that this landlord’s nose is being put out. I hope he sees the work being done to highlight this case. You should shine a light on it and let people make their own minds up on whether it’s acceptable to do what they’ve done to these people.”
Rayner added: “These people should not be landlords. They should have no place in providing homes, because the way they’ve treated the people here is disgusting and disgraceful.”
“There are some really good landlords that provide homes for people.... People shouldn’t be seen as an asset where a landlord can, on a whim of a pen, evict you to put somebody else in because they can make more profit.
Rayner is the bookmakers’ favourite to replace Keir Starmer as prime minister, despite resigning from the cabinet last autumn after she was found to have underpaid stamp duty on the purchase of a flat. She’s currently awaiting the outcome of an HMRC investigation into her tax affairs but is on the comeback trail, this week declaring that Starmer is “running out of time” to turn around his government and avoid being seen as the party of the establishment.
“I say to that billionaire, would you want your family to be treated like that?”
Rayner made the comments while meeting residents of the Delta Point building at a drop-in eviction clinic hosted by Croydon West MP Sarah Jones, where lawyers were on hand to assist with their fight against Criterion.
Labour’s Croydon mayoral candidate Rowenna Davis said that if elected she would work with other councils to block the use of Aziz’s companies for housing if they didn’t improve: “If you can up your standards, we will keep you. If you can’t, I will work collectively across other councils to say you can’t be doing this.”
Rayner said she’d been shocked by some of the stories she’d heard about Criterion, which is facing claims it faked electrical safety certificates: “People are too frightened even to raise legitimate concerns around safety and standards because they think they'll get evicted”
She posed a question directly to Aziz: “I say to that billionaire, would you want your family to be treated like that? I bet you’d lawyer up. And I bet you’d do everything in your power to protect your loved ones... These people do not have the resources to be able to do that, and that’s why the state should be there for them.”
“People need to feel that somebody is on their side and standing up for them. That's why I've come down today: to say that landlord's behaviour is completely unacceptable.”
Mudchute city limits
Good news from east London – Mudchute Park and Farm in the Isle of Dogs, which offers the chance to look at animals in the shadow of Canary Wharf, has secured its future.
As we previously reported, the charity that runs the city farm had been in dispute with Tower Hamlets mayor Lutfur Rahman over a new lease for the site. But now a deal has been reached for a new lease on a higher rent, subject to approval at next week’s full council meeting. If you’ve never been, it’s well worth a celebratory trip down the DLR to look at the llamas, sheep, and pigs going about their business next to giant skyscrapers.
PS. The government has launched its local news strategy, which aims to ensure there is a future for regional journalism. The document highlights four examples of the importance of local journalism across the UK when it comes to “shining light on wrongdoing and the misuse of power”. One of them is London Centric’s ongoing investigation into high-street tax evasion. Thanks to all the subscribers who enable us to carry out this work!
Great stuff James. London Centric is proper, decent journalism and London needs that as much today as in the past. You show that the demise of print does not have mean the demise of scrutiny.
Great news about Mudchute. Many happy days spent there with my grandson, befriending the pigs and dodging voracious squirrels in search of toddlers’ snacks.