I've Done it. We Are Currently a No Car Household.

buglawton

Moving closer to work is a logical step if you want to avoid car ownership, but here in the South of the UK swapping one ordinary semi for another nearer work would cost £10k to the chancellor before moving costs are considered.

Savvy_Sue

I'm surprised a local council doesn't already offer a bike mileage allowance to staff. When I worked for a Housing Association, we did, and our T&Cs were usually very similar to the local council.

If it's just yourself (rather than lots of kit) you need to get to your calls, there is no reason at all to be required to have a car. And indeed it could be seen as discriminatory against non-drivers, some of whom may be disabled.

Don't know if there's anything on the ACAS site about bike allowances ...

TJ27

Oh I do get mileage payment for my bike. I don't know the exact rate but it's something like the ten pence mentioned by GB.

However, if I use my car I get something like four times that rate, plus I get a lump sum payment of about seventy pounds per month. Because I'm part time, and don't really do huge business mileage. The lump sum is the significant figure.

So say I do fifty business miles in a month. On my bike I get about a fiver. In a car I get about ninety quid.

I've actually been offered quite a nice old mini metro for free. I reckon I could run it for slightly less than what the council would pay me for having it. But I'd rather do without the hassle of it if possible.

So the bike costs me almost nothing to use and, if the lump sum is taken away, I get almost nothing for using it. On the other hand I would be paid more for running a car than it costs me to run it.

Ergo, if my lump sum is taken away, the bike becomes more expensive to use than the car. That's plain crazy.

My point to my employers is this. How can they possibly claim to be environmentally friendly, and expect their staff to use bikes, when they make it more economically attractive to use a car? It's just ludicrous.

On the other hand, if they paid MORE money for using a bike than for using a car not only might it encourage people to cycle (which they claim to want to do) it would actually save them money. As I mentioned before, their own website states that car parking spaces cost them about five hundred quid per year each, and that's just for starters. They quote a list of cycling benefits to both employer and employee that's as long as your arm. Many of them would save significant sums of money.

Do you guys think this makes sense, or am I talking nonsense? I don't want my employers to rubbish me when I try to put it to them next week. I'd rather you lot do it here.:D

Savvy_Sue

Ah, misunderstood you, didn't think your council was offering a bike allowance.

You're talking sense on one level, BUT expenses probably have to bear some relation to the ACTUAL expense incurred otherwise the taxman will get interested ...

You might do better to go down the route of encouraging the council to look at how many of their 'essential car users' actually NEED a car, and reduce the number of essential car user payments they're then having to pay. They're also widening opportunities for non-drivers, which means they're reducing indirect discrimination against disabled workers.

Of course this won't necessarily make you very popular with your colleagues who benefit from the ECU allowance ... and don't really mind about the insanity of it!

TJ27

Aye, it's a fair point that one should only receive expenses in line with what one pays for. I'm unsure about the tax situation to be honest.

I'm told however that some companies have already adopted a policy of paying more to cycle users than to car users. I don't know how true that is but to my mind it makes sense, for the reasons already given.

I guess I'll have to do a bit more research. In the meantime I'll continue to use me bike though. Thanks everybody.

TJ

Edit: There's quite a bit of information about this online. For example, Richmond Council pay 50p per mile for cycles. That's more than my car mileage.

Apparently councils can pay more to cyclists but the taxman treats it like a salary increase. Which is fine as long as the bottom line figure makes sense I suppose.

rosh12

mjr600 wrote: »

But I'm afraid those early posters who talk about a car being a green sin and carbon footprints have once again attempted to subvert a good thread with religious enviromental feel good babble.

Hmm that'd be me I guess! I have to say I think of - and experience- carbon footprints in a fairly literal sense ... we are v fortunate in living by the sea (because of OH's job), but it gets SO congested with tourists etc for half the year- the area where we live apparently has one of the worst pollution rates in the country, primarily from the non-stop traffic. SO, for me, it's not about religious environmental feel good babble, it's about the fact that since moving out of SW London to the coast, my asthma's got worse, the clean washing on our line often comes in dry but pretty grimey and it's pretty nasty walking around in the summer!

Justamum

TJ27 wrote: »

Aye, it's a fair point that one should only receive expenses in line with what one pays for. I'm unsure about the tax situation to be honest.

I'm told however that some companies have already adopted a policy of paying more to cycle users than to car users. I don't know how true that is but to my mind it makes sense, for the reasons already given.

I guess I'll have to do a bit more research. In the meantime I'll continue to use me bike though. Thanks everybody.

TJ

Edit: There's quite a bit of information about this online. For example, Richmond Council pay 50p per mile for cycles. That's more than my car mileage.

Apparently councils can pay more to cyclists but the taxman treats it like a salary increase. Which is fine as long as the bottom line figure makes sense I suppose.

You say in your first paragraph that one should only receive expenses in line with what one pays out - presumably so that nobody loses out having to use a car for work. However in your penultimate paragraph you say that Richmond Council pay 50p per mile for cycles, which seems to contradict your first statement - even this could count as a salary increase as how can it cost anybody 50p per mile to use their legs? Surely people should only receive payments for their car if it is essential for their work, but if they use a car just because they want to then they shouldn't receive anything at all. I don't think anybody should receive money for using a bicycle.

Garnet_Gem

Could you suggest to your employers that they run a council car pool where emplyess would be able to use a car strictly for council business and return it daily?

TJ27

Justamum wrote: »

You say in your first paragraph that one should only receive expenses in line with what one pays out - presumably so that nobody loses out having to use a car for work. However in your penultimate paragraph you say that Richmond Council pay 50p per mile for cycles, which seems to contradict your first statement - even this could count as a salary increase as how can it cost anybody 50p per mile to use their legs? Surely people should only receive payments for their car if it is essential for their work, but if they use a car just because they want to then they shouldn't receive anything at all. I don't think anybody should receive money for using a bicycle.

Well I suppose what I'm saying is that as a general principle, getting paid for what you spend is a pretty basic expenses ethic, and very difficult to argue with. Richmond council do pay a lot for their bike mileage, but it's not an allowance set by me I'm afraid. Perhaps it is treated as a salary increase? I dunno. Perhaps bike riders should get a salary increase for their effort, in the same way that they get increases for extra effort in the workplace generally? Well why not? They reckon that bike riders have less days off sick, are more productive, etc, etc. So in fact, contrary to what you might think, paying more for people to cycle could actually save money?

I am classed as a essential car user. I didn't decide that, my employers did. I do visits in all parts of the city on a regular basis as part of my job. If I wanted to I could just carry on using my car and making money on it. But what I'm thinking of proposing is an alternative where I probably still make a bit of money and the council also saves quite a lot of money in the process. In turn the taxpayer saves too, people are encouraged to cycle, roads are less congested and the environment benefits too.

Surely that would be a win, win, win, win, win situation? Me, council, taxpayer, motorist, environment.

I don't really mind (much) spending the taxpayers money to run my car if that's what you think I should do. I have been doing just that for seven years after all.

Possibly the reason that somebody should be paid 50p for using their legs is because the alternative costs a hell of a lot more. I do mean financially as well as environmentally. 50p per mile would cost the council about £25 per month for me to use my bike. The same mileage in my car costs them about £90. Which form of transport do you think the taxpayer would have me use?

But unless you pay that 50p, nobody will bother. It's got little to do with what it costs, that's peanuts frankly. It's more to do with what it saves.

Savvy_Sue

Of course it's not just your mileage, it's also the time it takes, because you are also paid for your time. I can well believe that you can get to most of your visits as quickly by bike as you can by car, but one of the reasons for requiring someone to have a car is that in many places you can make cross-city (or cross-country) journeys faster by car than you can by public transport - if indeed the transport goes there at all!

That is certainly the case in Bristol, where we can quite easily get to work from where we live by bus or train, BUT getting to anywhere else in a hurry by public transport is a nightmare! When the train service is only hourly (and less frequent in the rush hour!) everything has to be carefully timed! I have had colleagues who didn't drive, and it took them a lot longer to make out of office visits, just because of the increased travelling time. Colleagues who can drive can go from the office to more than one appointment in succession, and respond to calls which come in while they're out if it's an emergency.

Of course responding to emergencies would be even easier if they were on bikes, because you can pull over almost anywhere to answer the phone if you're on a bike!

And I am fairly sure that if an employer pays MORE than HMRC's agreed maximum rates, then a tax liability arises. Yup, see this page and the links. So, employees of Richmond Council being paid 50p per mile are being taxed on 30p per mile.