Cycle to work scheme - is it worth it?

kwmlondon

I bought a £1,000 Specialized Sirrus which worked out about £650 for me with the cycle to work discount.

The lock, lights, mudguards and pitlocks added up to about £200 but now it's fully paid off and I'm using it for its second year, and I pay about £200 a year in servicing and bits.

However.... I cycle an average of 100 miles a week, and every now and again do a big run (London to Brighton or something).

davidlizard

Cycle to work used to be worth it, however since the treasury rules on the payment for the token value of the bike were changed a couple of years back - typically now expect to pay around £50-£100 rather than just a few pounds - its usefulness is debatable.

Our company offered a CTW scheme, however we had to use Halfords. After the treasury rules were changed, it worked out cheaper to negotiate deals with local bike shops than go through this.

Our company withdrew from the scheme and now gives financial incentives for people who cycle, which has been highly effective in getting people out of their cars. They fund this by leasing the car spaces they are not using to long term car storage company.

davidlizard

Idiophreak wrote: »

Really? I cycle and would have to dispute that it's cheaper than driving, really.

I do about a 30 mile roundtrip and it costs me around £3 per day in fuel.

If I cycle, I'll always have an extra snack in the morning and maybe one in the afternoon - costing £1 - 1.50 total. Then when I get home, I've got to wash and dry two sets of cycle kit (one in, one out) and my towel. Washing tablet, water, energy...I also go through shower gel, shampoo, hair product etc fairly quickly...Between all of these things, I imagine I'm not far from the £3 anyway...then add in the ridiculous amount I spend on clothing, bits for the bike (admittedly, most of them are luxuries ), new inner tubes...

All of this, combined with the cost of buying the bike, means it would have been significantly cheaper for me to drive to work every day over the last year - with all the washing, drying and eating involved, I'd imagine driving would have been better for the environment, too...thankfully, I do it for fun and exercise, so neither of the above bother me...but I really think it's a bit of a myth that cycling saves money and/or the environment in all cases...

(I appreciate that if I were to switch completely and *only* cycle, I'd probably save money....but I bought the bike thinking "well, even if I only cycle once or twice per week I'll save a few quid in fuel" - and it's really not worked out like that )

There are also other expenses with driving - wear and tear on the car, depreciation as the mileage increases and less tangible things like increased chance of damage or an accident and therefore higher insurance premiums, speeding fines and the like.

But as you say, when you take into account all the washing, extra showers (I shower at work so that saves one shower a day at home) the savings are not so great.

I run to work quite often. My running shoes cost around £70, and are expected to last 500 miles. Many economic cars could probably do 500 miles on a £70 tank of petrol!

pt8am

I must warn of my experience with cycle to work.

Bike cost £700. tax savings over the year (£16 x 12 months) were £191. Therefore bike has cost me £508. Not bad but having just paid final month i'm given three options

1. Pay another one off payment of £46. Total savings now £145 and i still do not own the bike for another 3 years and then i will be faced with these similar choices again.
2. buy bike for £161 which, over a year means i pay £669. a saving of about 5 percent of the purchase price. pretty crap considering it was billed as saving 32% of the price through tax.
3. return the bike to them at my own cost (more than £46 i imagine).

Logic dictates i take option 1 but i am flabbergasted at how i was led to believe a nominal fee would enable me to buy the bike from my employers and hence make the savings above (191 - nominal fee). What happens now is the cycle to work extortionists take back ownership of the bike from your employers and then proceed to bend you over in the manner detailed above. Now i know how the cycle to work scheme made several million pounds profit last year.

I would think long and hard about taking up this scheme again and would suggest considering as an alternative saving for a while and buy a bike that is new but from last years or the year before range before they got replaced by this years. that way you will get a good spec bike for less and it will still be new to you. Alternatively use any of the 0% finance options or take your chances on e bay other auction websites. Credit where credit is due this great business model but surely the savings make this closer to a hire purchase agreement than salary sacrifice incentive.

redux

Can people be in a cycle to work scheme without having to hire purchase a new bike?

A mileage allowance arrangement?

Marco_Panettone

I've always wondered what any company would do if you decided to return the bike. They wouldn't want it, or the hassle of reselling it on the open market. I doubt they'd want to hire it to someone else (possible legal problems re: maintanence).

If you offered them a nominal £5 I doubt they'd turn you down just to be rid of it.

Weird_Nev

Idiophreak wrote: »

Cycling cost more than driving.

I really don't think you've done your sums correctly.
If we factor in insurance, wear and tear, depreciation, VED, parking permits, then the fuel costs pale into insignifcance in running a car.

Furthermore a daily cycle ride has huge health benefits, negates the need for gym membership, etc.

If you can use the cycle to work scheme to actually avoid having a second car, then there's no question that it will save you heaps. I managed this a coupled of times: I cycled a 26 mile a day round trip daily for over a year (pre cycle scheme), and that was at a time when I couldn't afford to run a car. More recently I used a cycle to work scheme bike to get to me to the train station and back, saving the need for a scooter or similar.

If you have to have car sat idle on the drive whilst you cycle, of course the costs are still racking up, but at least you're not contributing to wear and tear, milage depreciation and traffic.

Idiophreak

Weird_Nev wrote: »

If you have to have car sat idle on the drive whilst you cycle, of course the costs are still racking up, but at least you're not contributing to wear and tear, milage depreciation and traffic.

It depends, doesn't it. I have a fixed mileage allowance on my leased car, so depreciation (mileage or otherwise) doesn't factor. On a 3 year lease I normally change the tyres once and have a couple of services. Skipping a few journeys to work and back makes little difference to this.

...and in saying "cycling cost more than driving", you're actually misquoting me significantly...I was quite clear in my original post that if you don't run a car as well, cycling may well be cheaper. In any case, I *have* done the sums - and the amount cycling has cost me over the last year or so *is* more than I've saved by not running the car.

stevemcol

Idiophreak wrote: »

Really? I cycle and would have to dispute that it's cheaper than driving, really.

I do about a 30 mile roundtrip and it costs me around £3 per day in fuel.

If I cycle, I'll always have an extra snack in the morning and maybe one in the afternoon - costing £1 - 1.50 total. Then when I get home, I've got to wash and dry two sets of cycle kit (one in, one out) and my towel. Washing tablet, water, energy...I also go through shower gel, shampoo, hair product etc fairly quickly...Between all of these things, I imagine I'm not far from the £3 anyway...then add in the ridiculous amount I spend on clothing, bits for the bike (admittedly, most of them are luxuries ), new inner tubes...

All of this, combined with the cost of buying the bike, means it would have been significantly cheaper for me to drive to work every day over the last year - with all the washing, drying and eating involved, I'd imagine driving would have been better for the environment, too...thankfully, I do it for fun and exercise, so neither of the above bother me...but I really think it's a bit of a myth that cycling saves money and/or the environment in all cases...

(I appreciate that if I were to switch completely and *only* cycle, I'd probably save money....but I bought the bike thinking "well, even if I only cycle once or twice per week I'll save a few quid in fuel" - and it's really not worked out like that )

Really interesting to read this in black & white and I have to agree. It's something I've pondered on myself. I'm almost exactly the same on a £3 per day drive (excluding wear & tear to the car) and I reckong taking all the above into account that I roughly break even . I still enjoy the cycling though.

I'm 'cycle to work' and it basically gets me a better bike than I would have paying by traditional means. I rate the scheme. Our 'terminal' payment works out at roughly one additional monthly payment.

gazzak_2

I pondered this but last year I didn't join the scheme for the same reasons as Idiophreak pointed out above, but I did buy my own bike for a great price online.

Forget the fact that the cost overall is more than driving, I'm getting fit and really enjoying it. That's worth the extra.