CYCLISTS in Poole can have their bicycles marked free of charge by police on Saturday.

Poole Town and Oakdale Safer Neighbourhood Team (SNT) will be marking bikes at the Joint Emergency Services Building in Wimborne Road between 12noon and 3pm.

And officers from the Rossmore and Alderney SNT will be at the student entrance to St Aldhelm’s Academy in Herbert Avenue between 2pm and 4pm.

Officers will be using BikeRegister marking kits and these will be available on a first come first served basis. Police recover large numbers of bikes in the town every year but only a fraction can be traced back to their owners.

Acting Sergeant Adam Gill, of the Rossmore and Alderney SNT, said: “If you can’t make it today, the best way to ensure that your bike will be returned to you if it is recovered by police is to take down the serial number (engraved into the frame and normally found under the bottom bracket) and register it on a secure online database such as bikeregister.com

“Police have access to the database and can easily trace the bike back to you.”

However he said this was not a substitute for a good quality D-lock.