As an enthusiastic, but rather slow, cyclist and being keen that more people should take to the road on bikes I make little apology this week in peddling the government’s Cycle to Work Scheme as my news item. The fact that it impinges on employment matters provides me with the excuse to bang a little drum.
With spring in the air, but not yet here, the thought of getting out on two wheels more often is invigorating and now is the time of year for employees to consider asking their employers to support a cycle to work scheme and to buy you a bike so that you can use it to travel some or all of the way to work. What you do with it in your spare time is up to you, of course.
Basically the scheme operates like this. Provided the employer makes the scheme open to all employees the company buys the bike (of your choice) by way of a loan of the price to you, then lets you pay for it by monthly instalments (typically twelve). Because your payments are salary sacrifices it means that taxable pay is reduced and NI contributions by employer and employees are reduced. As the company actually buys the bike it should be able to bear the VAT. Typically, for a 20% rate tax payer £500 of bike should cost the employee only about £300 at the end of the day.
Naturally, there are a number of conditions but it is well worth looking into.
There is a handy government booklet at
and if you google “cycle to work scheme” there are a number of organisations that provide fuller advice than I have given.
