Cycle to Work Scheme & Working From Home

[spen666]

A bit of a rhetorical question, but ad it understand it, technically understand the Cycle to Work Scheme,

should primarily be used for commuting to and from workplace, but can also be used for other cycling purposes

Now if I work predominantly from home (at least 60% of my time), does my pre work ride count as commute work and did any post work ride.

I may well start and finish at the same location, which also happens to be my workplace at least 3 days a week.

So technically I think that counts as commuting to work.

I said at start it's rhetorical really as no one is going to check up on this

 

[oxoman]

A lot of companies pay a blind eye to it. And its certainly not policed. If it was hardly anybody apart from hard-core cyclist's would bother using the scheme.

 

[cyberknight]

I agree with @oxoman , not many bother with the rules of the scheme .

 

[Alex321]

Unfortunately I'd say not, your not using the bike for work. Do I have to ride to work everyday?

> At least 50% of the bike and/or accessories use should be for work purposes. For example, if you used the bike 10 times in a year, at least 5 of those journeys must be work-related.

For me a colleague told me my own employer will refuse applications if you are not based in the office full time, I haven't put an application in since I started WFH.

Our company now requires office attendance for 50% of your work time for most of us, and they encourage applications. Though I think they still have the old limit of £1000 in place.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Is a question a question, if it does not end with a ?

 

[MontyVeda]

Most people i know who've got a bike on the C2W do not cycle to work. They just wanted a bike on HP.

 

[spen666]

Unfortunately I'd say not, your not using the bike for work. Do I have to ride to work everyday?

> At least 50% of the bike and/or accessories use should be for work purposes. For example, if you used the bike 10 times in a year, at least 5 of those journeys must be work-related.

For me a colleague told me my own employer will refuse applications if you are not based in the office full time, I haven't put an application in since I started WFH.

I am riding to my workplace though



in any event, my employer has agreed my application, so the last point is not one i need to concern myself with, thankfully and a £10k limit

 

[spen666]

I'd disagree, its a circular trip from your house and back with no stops (except for cake?). But doesn't matter what I think if its approved.

Forstly - lets deal with the elephant in the room - is it a bike ride without a cakestop? [ Probably explains why I am like an elephant - too many cake stops!

There is nothing in the cycle to work rules that says where you commute from have to be different places. It is most definitely a circular trip starting from my home and ending at my place of work for that day. It just so happens that my place of work today is my home. Tomorrow it will be a different place of work.

I accept that if I did not ride my bike,today, I would end up at my place of work still. There is nothing in the rules of the scheme that say the ride to work is necessary to get to work, as that would rule out nearly everyone as people could walk, drive, use public transport etc to get ot work without cycling.

Compared to some on here, I appear to have (in this respect) a more lenient employer who is not trying to limit access to scheme. I never realised other employers had the restrictions people have mentioned

 

[ebikeerwidnes]

But what if you have an office at the bottom of the garden
or in a converted garage

and you take your bike out of the shed and go for a ride that ends up in the place where you work

it may be a long ride whereas the minimum trip to the office is of the order of 10 yards
but you are still riding from the house to the office
albeit via a massively longer route than necessary

after all - the route taken is not specified



Oh - and a ride without a cake stop is still a ride - I seldom stop for cake and my normal ride tend to avoid populated places and so are rather low on the cafe count!

 

[Dadam]

There is nothing in the cycle to work rules that says where you commute from have to be different places. It is most definitely a circular trip starting from my home and ending at my place of work for that day. It just so happens that my place of work today is my home. Tomorrow it will be a different place of work.

The rules of the scheme might not state that, but at the end of the day I personally would not want to fight HMRC about that. The point of the 50% for work use is to get the salary sacrifice benefit and avoid benefit in kind tax. I think it's a stretch to claim a circular route as a commute as it is not a necessary ride to get to work.

At the end of the day it's academic, nobody's going to check u, and even though you yourself would be riding anyway, on balance the scheme does increase the amount of active travel.

 

[fossyant]

Flexible working here and nobody checks. People are usually in the office a minimum of two days a week.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Though I think they still have the old limit of £1000 in place.

That never was a limit of the cycle to work scheme. Just a credit limit imposed by individual companies. Companies could, did and do offer higher limits

 

[Alex321]

That never was a limit of the cycle to work scheme. Just a credit limit imposed by individual companies. Companies could, did and do offer higher limits

Having looked at the government site linked to above, I now realise that many companies (including mine) impose the £1000 limit because it is the most they can do without FCA authorisation.

I had thought (wrongly) it was actually a limit imposed on the schemes at one time.

 

[MontyVeda]

... I never realised other employers had the restrictions people have mentioned

Maybe years ago, a colleague was talking with the boss about the C2W scheme. Employee was saying how great it is and the boss was quite interested too and allowed the employee to sign the company up for the scheme... Then the boss realised that he'd have to pay for the bike(s) upfront and the employees would repay him bit by bit. "F*ck that!" was his final word on the matter.

 

[Dadam]

Maybe years ago, a colleague was talking with the boss about the C2W scheme. Employee was saying how great it is and the boss was quite interested too and allowed the employee to sign the company up for the scheme... Then the boss realised that he'd have to pay for the bike(s) upfront and the employees would repay him bit by bit. "F*ck that!" was his final word on the matter.

Depends on the scheme. With some the scheme retains ownership of the bike and the employer leases it from the scheme, and obviously then charges the employee through payroll.