Chris Curtis MP has opened a survey on the MK e-scooter trial for Milton Keynes North residents, before a summit with Lime, Dott, the council and police.

The MP for Milton Keynes North has opened a public survey on the city’s e-scooter trial and called a meeting with the two operators, the council and the police.

Chris Curtis published the survey on Wednesday 16 September. He is calling the meeting a “Scooter Summit”. According to his announcement, it will bring together:

  • the MP
  • the scooter operators
  • Milton Keynes City Council
  • northern parish councils
  • Thames Valley Police

He said the summit would happen “next week”. Written on Wednesday 16 September, that points to the week beginning Monday 21 September. No date, venue or agenda has been published.

Curtis said in the announcement: “E-scooters provide an important alternative way to get around our city, but we must work to ensure that schemes to help one group get around the city don’t come at the expense of another.” He added that the survey exists “so that anybody who lives in Milton Keynes North can share their views”.

What the survey asks, and who can fill it in

The Scooter Summit Survey is a short form on the MP’s own website. It asks one question about the trial: “How has the e-scooter trial impacted you? Please include your estate.”

First name, last name, email address, postcode and a consent tick are required. A phone number is optional. No closing date is given on the page.

It is for people who live in Milton Keynes North. The city is split between two Westminster seats, Milton Keynes North and Milton Keynes Central, so not every MK Daily reader is covered. You can check which one your address falls in using the House of Commons postcode lookup. Curtis has represented Milton Keynes North for Labour since July 2024.

The trial is six years old and was meant to last twelve months

Milton Keynes City Council launched its e-scooter trial in August 2020, under a Department for Transport scheme. That much is set out in the council’s own E-Scooter Trial Extension report, the delegated decision taken on 9 April 2024.

The report is blunt about why the trial keeps rolling on. It was “initially programmed to last for twelve months at which point legislation was expected to be in place”. Parliament has never passed that legislation. Each time the deadline arrives, the DfT asks councils whether they want to extend, and Milton Keynes has said yes.

Timeline of the Milton Keynes e-scooter trial from its 2020 launch to the 2028 national end date

Three operators started in MK: Lime, Tier and Ginger. Ginger moved to a long-term hire model with about 30 scooters and its allocation was split between the other two in 2023. The second operator now trades as Dott. Its representative told the council’s Parishes Forum that the MK service “originally started as SPIN” and launched here in September 2020. SPIN was later bought by Tier, which uses Dott e-scooters. That account is in the minute of the meeting of 13 March 2025.

The rules, and the three different speed limits

The national rules are set by the Department for Transport in its guidance for rental e-scooter users:

  • you need a provisional or full UK driving licence with category Q entitlement
  • the operator provides third-party insurance
  • you must not ride on the pavement, and only one person may ride at a time
  • privately owned e-scooters remain illegal to use on public land anywhere in the UK

The speed limit is where the official sources stop agreeing. The DfT guidance sets a national maximum of 15.5mph. The council’s own travel site, Get Around MK, says the scooters are “restricted to less than 15mph”. Dott told the Parishes Forum that 12.5mph is the maximum in Milton Keynes, and that speeds drop automatically to 8mph or 10mph in tight or busy places.

What the council already knows about the scheme

This is the part that rarely makes it into coverage of the trial. The council has been publishing usage figures for years, and they are specific.

From the April 2024 decision report:

  • more than two million trips across the network since launch
  • 3.4 million kilometres ridden on e-scooters in MK
  • an estimated 350,000 to 400,000 car trips removed
  • around 128 tonnes of carbon saved against the equivalent car trips
  • 350,000 active users
  • Lime and Tier each capped at a maximum fleet of 630 scooters

That 128-tonne carbon figure is worth a second look. It is the same number the council published in November 2022, seventeen months earlier, alongside a count of 1.6 million journeys. The trip count moved. The carbon figure did not.

The 2024 report also records what Lime wanted in exchange for signing up to another two years. The company asked to grow its fleet from 630 to 1,000 scooters, with mandatory geofenced parking zones across Central Milton Keynes. Its second proposal was 1,200 scooters with the operating area extended south and east to cover Newton Leys, Little Brickhill and Woburn Sands. Lime offered at least five new local jobs and £10,000 of hire credits for people on low incomes or looking for work.

Two details from that report matter for anyone reading the scheme as a commercial arrangement. There is no money changing hands: the report states there are “no financial implications” and “no financial arrangement between the Council and the E-Scooter operators”. And Lime’s submission on fleet size was withheld from publication as commercially sensitive, with the public and press excluded from that part of the meeting.

Figures given to the Parishes Forum in March 2025 were higher again, but they are not counted on the same basis, so they cannot simply be stacked on top of each other:

  • the council’s officer said there had been over 3.5 million trips on hire e-bikes and e-scooters since the trials began, a third of them commuting, with average trips of 1.5km to 3.5km
  • Lime said over three million trips since 2020, replacing over 600,000 car trips
  • Lime said it issued over 750 warnings and fines in the previous year and blocked more than 450 users
  • Dott said over one million rides, around 400 e-scooters, and an average ride of 10 minutes and 2.5km

Parish councillors raised these complaints eighteen months ago

The summit is not the first meeting of its kind. The council runs an e-scooter stakeholder group that meets every two months, and parish councils were told at the March 2025 Parishes Forum that they were welcome to attend and could be sent an invitation.

At that meeting, with both operators in the room, members raised almost exactly the issues now being surveyed:

  • Lime equipment was “left everywhere” in Newport Pagnell while the Santander e-bikes were parked up properly (Councillor Winsor)
  • e-bikes and e-scooters were being ridden two-up by children in Oldbrook, with parents assumed to be registering accounts for them (Councillor Greenwood)
  • helmets should be mandatory, and government statistics reported over 1,100 injuries a year (Councillor Andrew)
  • riders in Central Milton Keynes were still using footways and riding tandem despite the parking scheme (Councillor Stabler)
  • operators should be instructing staff not to leave equipment in inappropriate places (Councillor Francis)

The council’s response, recorded in the minute, was that operators rely on the public to report tandem riding and obstructive parking, and that operators can trace the last user of any scooter. Lime’s representative said the human element overrode the technology in place.

The question the summit has not answered yet

The April 2024 decision extended the trial to May 2026. It also committed the council to re-procuring the e-scooter concession “in time for the new Arrangements to be in place for June 2026”. That was subject to Parliament legislating. The report added that “if not, a further extension may be necessary”.

Parliament still has not legislated. Nationally, the DfT’s guidance for local authorities now says trials run to 31 May 2028. That page was last updated in January 2024 and still refers to 18 live trials, while the user guidance page, updated on 7 July 2026, lists Milton Keynes among 21 trial areas.

What we could not establish is what MK’s own arrangement now is. The council’s published decision record lists 1,211 decisions between May 2024 and this week. Not one of them has e-scooter in its title. The forward plan of executive decisions running from 29 May to 30 September 2026 does not carry one either. Whether the concession was re-procured, rolled over or extended again is not on the public record. That is a fair question for the summit.

What it means for you

If a scooter is blocking a path or has been ridden badly, the council’s advice is to report it straight to the operator rather than to the council. The contacts on Get Around MK are:

  • Lime: help-miltonkeynes@li.me, 0800 808 5223
  • Dott: support@ridedott.com, 0800 048 8993

Note the date, time and location, and the registration plate on the scooter if you can see it. The council says that is enough for an operator to identify the rider. Operators are held to a standard of responding within two to four hours to a report of scooters blocking a route. Riders who keep parking badly can be warned, fined and eventually banned from the scheme.

The council also takes reports through its own e-bike and e-scooter incident form.

If you live in Milton Keynes North and want your experience in front of the summit, the survey is open now with no published deadline. If you live elsewhere in the city, the stakeholder group that already meets every two months is the route your parish council can use.

For everything else moving around MK this week, see our Milton Keynes roadworks and travel page, and our guide to parking in Milton Keynes.