CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
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The cycle to work scheme enabled all employees of NHS Lothian to locate a local bike shop and purchase a bike and associated safety equipment through a salary scheme. Since the launch in October 2008 there have been x staff enquiries with y confirmed orders through the cycle to work scheme.
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Well I'm surprised at the numbers (maybe old doc looking at first year).
http://www.sestran.gov.uk/uploads/NHS%20Lothian%20Case%20Studies.pdf?
In NHS Certainly aware that the bike to work scheme was for some reason slow to take off. The council approach of using only one provider kept it simple and ensured success but also limited choice of vendor to zero, tho EBC could get bikes other than the ones in store.
These schemes are necessarily slow to take off unless there's a real pent up demand for cycling that can only be satisfied by a 25% or 40% tax break on the cost of a bike. Personally, I reckon bikes are cheap enough that if anyone really wanted to be cycling, they'd be cycling already. So, a new cycle to work scheme is likely to be largely +1 bikes and upgrades.
I agree. Both SWMBO and myself used the Cycle to Work scheme to buy an extra bike - we could easily afford to pay cash.
It doesn't work out much cheaper unless you're a higher rate payer.
SWMBO got a £1k voucher which paid for £900-worth of bike (because the scheme provider skims off 10%).
She repaid £1k less tax and VAT, which is £680, but her company contracted out the bikes (i.e. they didn't buy them on employees' behalf) so there was also a credit charge on top of that.
Finally, to take possession of the bike at the end of the hire period she then had to pay an extra hundred and something pounds.
It did work out cheaper than paying cash, and a state-sponsored interest free loan on bikes is still pretty neat, but I'm not sure it was worth the hassle if you can afford to buy outright (and certainly not sure it's going to convert the masses to two wheels).
I got my racer which got me started cycling again on the cycle scheme. At the time I couldn't have afforded a new bike so I budgeted my bus fare out for 12 months and came up with a voucher for about £750. The following year I got a N+1 mtb the year after I got child care vouchers...
Out of interest - if it wasn't for C2W scheme, do you think you'd have stuck on the bus, or picked up a bike from gumtree / eBay / bike station?
You can get a servicable used bike very cheaply- £70 is the going rate today on Edinburgh Gumtree for a choice of models.
The LB pass is over £50 per month now? I'm working hard at converting colleagues...
I didn't mean to imply that it never happens. I was thinking back to the early days of the city car club (for my sins I spent three years monitoring the setup) and people were genuinely surprised (especially one zealot from DfT) that when it was launched people weren't rushing to sell their cars and sign up. Initially the take-up came from two groups mainly: people who had a car and wanted occasional access to another one (n+1), and people who were due to replace a car and who joined the car club to try it out knowing they could still buy a new car if the scheme didn't work for them.
There's a parallel with C2W. Early adopters are people who are sold on the idea already. It takes longer for other people to jump on board, usually after they've seen it work for friends and colleagues.
Out of interest - if it wasn't for C2W scheme, do you think you'd have stuck on the bus, or picked up a bike from gumtree / eBay / bike station?
Not sure tbh, I think I'd have maybe got an gumtree original and having found my fitness wanting given up.
Going a bit Cortés (burning my boats) and spending my merge transport budget meant I didn't have a choice and in the early days I spent as much time looking for an excuse not to take the bike as I now do making sure i've got at least one function cycle. Having a decent bike also encouraged me to spend more time on it.
The LB pass is over £50 per month now?
Only just, but I had the tax "saving" included. I worked it it out with the tax saving so the £750 voucher cost about £40 a month.
The savings are more than the current tax rates as NI savings are also made. For a standard rate tax payer the combined saving is 32% and for a Higher rate payer 42%. These are significant savings and it's the retailer who pays the 'tariff' to the Cycle Scheme provider.
This is why you'll find retailers generally dont offer 'Sale' bikes under the scheme as they've already reduced margins. One exception to this I've found is Decathlon. For a 'new' model where there is no retail discount a saving of even 32% is not to be sniffed at as well as the 'interest free' attraction of the scheme. I'd also disagree with the scheme being largely for existing cyclists. Anecdotal evidence from my employer (a large financial institution) is that it's attracting a great number of 'newbies'.
As someone who lives with an NHS employee however I believe their scheme is very difficult to find and process. My girlfriend was interested but gave up due to conflicting information and time taken and ended up taking an interest free finance deal with EBC which she sorted within an hour!
At my work, C2W has attracted a few newbies, but also a lot more +1s/upgrades.
The original C2W scheme did allow you to make a good tax saving. Bikes at the end of the lease (e.g 1 or 3 years old) were being sold for a nominal £5 residual value, which was great!
But then some jobs-worth at Rolls Royce queried HMRC on the residual values, and pushed them for an answer. To which they responded with a table which bumped the residual values up from anywhere from £70 to £150. This meant that the scheme barely saved you anything, especially when you take into account the 10% discount you could have negotiated at the bike shop if you were not doing C2W.
Typical government - they make some complicated scheme to give with one hand, then change the rules at a whim, then take back with the other hand.
A much better way to encourage bike purchase would be to simply make all bikes VAT free. End of.
In my work I was probably the 1st to use C2W in our office.
since then you are probably talking 10% plus have used the scheme at least once
sadly we are limited to £500 under the Halfords scheme and no sign of them upping the limit
I heard rumours that there was some bike purchase scheme about to be introduced when I worked at CEC. Despite phoning every department I could think of for details no-one had heard of it. I bought a bike at EBC and within a month the Council launched their first ever C2W scheme. I was not best pleased. My colleague was a bit of a poster girl for it - appearing, with a quote in the literature for the following year - despite only once using the bike to get to work.
These are significant savings and it's the retailer who pays the 'tariff' to the Cycle Scheme provider.
Well, that's true, but it's like saying that customers don't pay VAT, as it's paid by the shop to HMRC (merely itemised on your bill).
In fact, bike shops are currently accepting 90% of the label price for new bikes and what's more, doing so in exchange for a voucher and an admin headache, not cash in the till.
Sadly I don't need another bike right now, but I bet if I took £900 in notes from the bank, I'd be able to convert it into a £1k bike at a shop which participates in these schemes - so the true value of the voucher is only £900.
No?
@Dave, your example assumes a saving of 10% to you on retail price and that a retailer will give you that discount.
You need to look at the net saving to you through the scheme, not the retailer. If you buy a £600 voucher you pay the net amount monthly of £34.50 and therefore £414 (31%, think I said 32% earlier)
Its irrelevant to you the voucher holder what the Scheme provider pays to the retailer and that arrangement is between them. The advantage to the retailer is he/she hopefully attracts a new customer but still achieves a sale albeit at 10% into margin (which based on your example they would get anyway if you paid cash)
So in other words a £600 voucher gets you £600 of kit, but at a cost to you of £414.
The schemes do lead to more bikes being sold which helps retailers. Don't think it increases the numbers cycling instead of driving?
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