Someone mentioned the green commute initiative to me today at work – cycle to work scheme with no upper limit:

The cycle to work scheme with no £1000 limit

I’ve not seen much discussion of this on here or elsewhere – anyone utilised it? It doesn’t seem to have been picked up by my employer so I don’t know how well established it is yet – plenty of bikeshops seem to have signed up.
Looks like it’s been driven by prospective ebike sales.

Could be significant for large corporate / public sector employees where the one grand limit was usually set in stone.

Looks interesting – maybe there is a HB160 in my future after all!!

It does look interesting, I wonder what the deal with the shops is, particularly whether they take such a huge chunk as most other C2W offerings do (I kinda hope it’s a bit smaller as they are a social enterprise, but they will I’m sure have bills to pay all the same).

On Instant GCI orders, we charge a 5% commission. For Corporate GCI this rises to just 7.5% to cover the extra costs involved.

Cyclescheme are 10%, I think.

Yes, a few weeks ago, they’re very good and very flexible.

I bought a Bird via them, Bird didn’t deal with them prior to me wanting to use them, but were open to it, GCI hadn’t dealt with Bird before, but they were both great about it.

I had to buy a voucher for 105% of the cost to cover the commission, although more traditional LBS have more margin flex so probably wouldn’t need to.

It’s cheaper for your employer if they pay for the bike up front (this is due to the way GCI have written their policies to circumvent the CCL issue) but they avoid some Employer NI which more than covers the interest if they finance it with them.

All told, my bike was £3300, we paid £3465 for it – it’ll cost me about £2k over the term and probably be worth £1500 s/h at the end, that’s incredibly cheap Mountain Biking. My mate has just ordered a crazy spec Bronson 3 via the scheme.

How do you go about persuading your employer to do this?

I work for a pretty bike firm who are already signed up to Cyclescheme…

One of my colleagues has just done it and it was all pretty easy. He’s got himself an e-mtb which he’s now commuting to work on. The no limit is good, at £1000 he’d probably not have done it and gone an bought a second car.He went through a local bike shop who are also the owners of the Giant store in shoreham and paid no extra. The savings are pretty big as it’s NI as well as tax you save on.

We are just a small company so in the past I’ve just bought my commuters through the company and while technically the company owns them no one else has ridden them other than me.

How do you go about persuading your employer to do this?

I work for a pretty bike firm who are already signed up to Cyclescheme…

I don’t think Cyclescheme force anyone into an exclusive agreement, I can just ask the MD as we share an office. My Mate is close to his too. If you’re in a bigger corp you’ll probably struggle to do it, or it’ll take years.

That does seem quite appealing. Maybe I can get an R5 Disc… :hmmm:

Edit: ugh, they’ve changed the emoticon shortcuts, you know the one.

Yes, a few weeks ago, they’re very good and very flexible.

I bought a Bird via them, Bird didn’t deal with them prior to me wanting to use them, but were open to it, GCI hadn’t dealt with Bird before, but they were both great about it.

I had to buy a voucher for 105% of the cost to cover the commission, although more traditional LBS have more margin flex so probably wouldn’t need to.

It’s cheaper for your employer if they pay for the bike up front (this is due to the way GCI have written their policies to circumvent the CCL issue) but they avoid some Employer NI which more than covers the interest if they finance it with them.

All told, my bike was £3300, we paid £3465 for it – it’ll cost me about £2k over the term and probably be worth £1500 s/h at the end, that’s incredibly cheap Mountain Biking. My mate has just ordered a crazy spec Bronson 3 via the scheme.

Very nice PJay. I’ll start lobbying my employer now, probably get another year out of my anthem, by which time they may be thinking about signing up for it.