[Closed] Cycle to Work Scheme

You might be better off looking at bikes in the sales, I was looking at buying a Kona Kula Gold earlier this year. It was £1295 in most shops but CRC had it on offer for £895, they don't do the cyclescheme we use but even so it was cheaper. Also I'd recomened the Kona Jake, I commute over all terrain night and day on mine.

It's worth doing as it spreads the payments.

Surly cross check is one penny below the max £1000 and is a great commuter. Very versatile bike.

Give me a shout if you want one on the scheme.

Are you able to set up your own in-house scheme? It is not that difficult.

This way you can avoid the 3rd party scheme fees and pay the shops directly, so you may be able to get a discount with your LBS. We did and got some good deals. Happy cyclists who got a good price and a happy shop as they got an order for 7 bikes.

It's already been set up, I think - I work for a school, I dunno if that will have any bearing on which way it's being done.

It's more like a 0% finance offer now, which isn't bad, just isn't as good as it was. As people have said, getting a sale bike, particularly if you get a 0% credit card or something will probably work out cheaper.

If you're unable to afford the lump sum for a new bike, can't get a bike on 0% finance, or don't have a 0% credit card, then Cycle to Work is worth it purely to spread the cost and help you afford a more expensive or better bike than you'd perhaps normally consider.

Otherwise, you can find just as good a price on a sale or 2nd hand bike. And you won't need to make the 'fair market value' payment to keep it at the end of 12 months.

In my opinion.

Totally agree with above, i am in the middle of my cycle scheme payments and i would not do it again, but it spread the cost of a nice whyte 805 for me and there was no way i had the money for one up front.
At the end of the day i will get the bike for something like £700 or so, so its a bit of a saving but not loads.

If you can pick up a nice sale bike and have the reddies then go for that, all the better if you can get it for 0%.

Don’t think it’s much point these days unless you can’t get 0% interest.

Last year I was after a Giant Seek 0 on the scheme, due to the voucher taking so long to come through all the 2010 models in XL had gone, so I had to have a 2011 model which was £80 more expensive and along with HMRC changing the interpretation of fair market value it works out almost exactly RRP

The store manager said it would have been cheaper for me to have taken a 2010 model myself as they were offering 30% discount & 0%, unfortunately by the time I discovered this the Cyclescheme voucher was on its way :/

Hmm. Doesn't sound that great... Reckon I might be best just building something up from the classifieds, I'd sooner avoid finance.

Different companies have different policies. YMMV.

Costs are spread out over 12 months, but the hire period is usually contracted to last for 3-5 years. This means that the final "fair market value" payment is significantly lower than if you took the bike on a 1 year hire period.

So for a 3 year scheme & a bike worth >£500, as a lower rate tax payer you are saving 31% on the cost of the bike (as a higher rate tax payer, you'd be saving 41%) but have to pay a 12% fair market value payment at the end of the 3 years. For schemes with longer terms the FMV payment reduces; for shorter terms it increases.

Ok, I think that makes sense... So on a 1k bike I'd pay £690 in instalments over a year, then at the end of 3 years I'd have to pay another £120 to keep it.

I shall look into it further and find out more details about the specific one we're using. Doesn't sound that appealing any more though!

njee20 - Member

It's more like a 0% finance offer now, which isn't bad, just isn't as good as it was. As people have said, getting a sale bike, particularly if you get a 0% credit card or something will probably work out cheaper.

Not true. There is still a saving to be made. Not as much as before but around the 30% mark so still possible to grab a bargain if you do a bit of shopping about.

My voucher finally arrived today - 4 weeks later than expected. Should have the new bike by the end of the week.

EDIT: Just checked the figures. Previous saving was 43%, now down to 32%.

And the final payment is 7% of the voucher value, so a final payment of £70 is due on a £1k bike if you want to keep it.

Euro - your scheme administrators should contact HMRC PDQ as they are about to break the rules and I wouldn't want them to get in to trouble.

How so druidh?