As Licensed Trade Charity (LTC) fundraiser of the year 2025, Thomson is part of a team of hospitality professionals who will cover 400km to raise funds for the LTC and Only A Pavement Away (OAPA).
In her latest blog, she travelled to Lincolnshire to meet up with fellow cyclist and fundraiser, Ben Woodley of OAPA.
Here is her entry:
Ben and I agreed to meet in Grantham as a halfway point between us and the plan was to get a training ride in before Christmas. Ben is one of two prison relationship managers at OAPA and we had plenty of time to talk about this relatively new role, how the funds raised will be used and his training preparation for the challenge.
I had planned a relaxed 35km route along undulating country lanes and checked the weather would hold out. No rain forecast in the morning, great. It meant we could ride and chat then get back for a coffee and a slab of cake.
Lives easily derailed
We started the ride and conversation with a question about his role at OAPA. Ben had previously worked as a police officer for eight years so was already familiar with how lives can so easily become derailed. As the job title suggests, he works with prisons (and employers) to help prison leavers into gainful and constructive employment, thereby dramatically reducing the chances of re-offending.
If you thought OAPA only places prison leavers in front-of-house and back-of-house roles, you’d be way off the mark (I was). The scope is huge – think of office-based jobs, maintenance roles, electricians, plumbers, decorators, etc. It’s the versatility and scale of UK hospitality that makes the sector such a valuable resource. Collectively, we’ve saved the public purse a massive £32m through reduced Government support, giving individuals financial independence.
Not only that, Ben confirms OAPA has placed 65 custodial members in 2025 alone, racking up an impressive 250 placements in total. Bear in mind prison leavers who leave custody with a job are 87% less likely to re-offend, ending the revolving door of repeat offending.
He shared two contrasting examples with me that gave real colour and understanding to his role.
Total show-stopper
In the first, he’d lined up a placement for a candidate in a perfect live-in role on leaving custody. The candidate had been placed on remand and, in the view of everyone but the judge, had served his time. Being a trained chef, his skills and experience were obvious and the role that Ben co-ordinated with the employer was a great fit in the lead-up to the busy Christmas period. The judge, however, decided to add a further four weeks to the sentence, and this ‘short’ delay was a total show-stopper for the employer who could not afford to keep the job open. That individual was then released from prison with nowhere to live and no job.
In the second case, Ben describes an individual who was placed with an employer who recognised their potential, putting them onto their internal training programme and then, after a short stint at a site near the prison, he was offered a transfer to a venue much closer to his family, thereby providing stability and social support to underpin the person and the role.
What these examples illustrate is how much work is involved in the lead up to and after the placement. As Ben says, “people who come out of custody and become advocates, thriving in their work, make it easier for those who follow. When it all aligns, it’s totally brilliant”.
Ben agreed the cycle ride didn’t go to plan. I massively underestimated how long it would take and we got caught in heavy rain. The shortcut to curtail our misery didn’t work out well either, as it meant the last eight miles were along a main road with impatient drivers and lots of road spray.
To see more about the cycling challenge in Cuba, click here.
