Cycle to Work Scheme is this right??

16simon

After a year of trying, I've been comprehensively that my employer isn't going to implement the Cycle to Work Scheme. Thing is, I'm not sure about their reasons for this, maybe someone who's been through this can help? This is what they said:

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Please be aware that xxxx and I met to discuss this scheme and gave it real consideration however unfortunately we felt that now was not an appropriate time to progress with it for the below reasons.

Initial start up costs of purchase
Safety and maintenance of equipment
College responsibility and liability
Renewal and depreciation costs
Salary sacrifice and payroll administration
Employment contracts and amending these to include
Withdrawal from the scheme
Advertising / Amin

Based on thorough investigation it was felt this was not a priority for the college.
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I'm particularly dubious about the start up costs of purchase and safety and maintenance of equipment, surely this isn't something the employer is concerned with?? Also contracts, has anyone else had to have their contract amended to be able to use C2W?

Christophe3967

These are amongst the usual reasons given by employers and some are valid. The employer does have the cost of the bikes to consider and the impact of employees leaving in the middle of a contract or not buying their bikes at the end of the contract is a concern.

The bottom line is that there is work involved and, if the take up is unlikley to be high, the scheme doesn't really work. Employers want to offer benefits that will be popular and, sadly, bikes aren't always high on people's wish list.

alfablue

Initial start up costs of purchase

They do have to front-up the purchase price, they make money and gain other benefits from doing so.

Safety and maintenance of equipment

Not relevant, the agreement the employee signs makes them wholly responsible for this

College responsibility and liability

None - many many employers, small and huge, are in the scheme and have no such fears, do they think they are all stupid? My guess would be the stupid ones are your employers!

Renewal and depreciation costs

Yes, the asset depreciates, but the intention is that it is sold on to the employee anyway, and the employer is fully reimbursed (indeed, they make a profit). Should an employee leave, the agreement requires full payment by the employee.

Salary sacrifice and payroll administration

Yes, probably the main admin issue, but not a big deal. If they did the computers for staff scheme, this works in exactly the same way.

Employment contracts and amending these to include

No change to employment contracts required

Withdrawal from the scheme

Uh? If they want to stop, they just stop, if the employee wants to bail out they have to pay all outstanding money

Advertising / Amin

Advertising - negligible - they have email don't they?

Admin, minimal

Plus, the employer makes 12% on savings of employers NI contribution, and probably makes 5% on selling the bike to the employee at the end of the agreement, so on a £1000 bike they could make £170, easily offsetting any costs - they are in profit.

Add reduction of parking spaces required (many councils, including my own, are imposing strict limits on workplace parking spaces for large employers, such as my local hospital), contribution to green transport plan and environmental credibility, employee satisfaction leading to better retention and work ethic.

Based on thorough investigation it was felt this was not a priority for the college.

Thorough my ar*e!

I work for a large educaional institution, they are lapping it up! They have over 200 employees in the scheme and they use it for lots of good PR!

Your lot seem to have made the judgement based on little knowledge and a lot of prejudice! Give 'em hell! Talk to the trade union, too!

joew4ll

I run the scheme for my company, takes me 5 minutes to do the paper work and maybe another five to check the accounting policies are applied properly. If it's a college, they must have a printing dept. I'd go to them and get some appropriately abusive posters made indicating the incompetence of your managers...

just for the fun of it you understand

16simon

Thanks everyone, especially Alfablue for the comprehensive demolition of their reasoning. I'll use what you wrote to respond to them, but I've got a feeling that those in power just don't want to do it - I am in Essex, where the car is king, after all - but I won't make it easy for them!!

andy83

my work are exactly the same

annoying thing is we have a health scheme through salary sacrafice at the minute through our wages

they just cant be bothered to do it and during this economic crisis they have the cheek to try make us work extra for less money cos it suits them, knowing our jobs arent likely to be mad redundant they want to treat us like idiots

think if they dont want to do it they dont have to. ive even offered to set it all up myself

Beeblebrox

As someone else said recently on here, get more people involved - and/or some sort of survey among staff (although you may want approval first) to see who would be interested. If you could say X% of staff are interested, giving X number of less cars in your car parks and a NI saving of X amount (and perhaps chucking in CO2 and risk of heart disease reduced stats), then it'll be far harder for them to easily dismiss this.

Wait for really sunny weather before e-mailing round a survey, though.

andy83

emails already gone round our place, no one wants to know out of around 50 different work places

prob is i work in care and a lot of people dont want to cycle after a 12 hour shift

my company can be very stubborn and i think no matter how much interest they would still say no

passout

I work in an educational establishment that managed to do it pretty easily. Clearly they can't be arsed. Many colleges have sustainable policies or a 'green agenda' - you could try linking your argument to these strategies. Also keep bugging them with E-mails!

dilemna

Ring up your local rag, anomymously, make it known in your community that the local college doesn't support green initiatives such as cycling which will be embarrassing for them. Of course you don't want to cause so much trouble you lose your job. I had a similar response from my large private employer who also said I had to be employed for a year which I hadn't at that point. In the end I bought a bike of my choice privately in a sale. List price was £875. I got it for £699 plus a couple of other things thrown in. I then took advantage of interest free option for 12 months that the shop was offering which has worked out a far far better deal for me than the B2W scheme as I put the bike money in a high interest savings account. All schemes launched by Government are not well thought through and too restrictive too many strings.

rolf_f

dilemna wrote:

In the end I bought a bike of my choice privately in a sale. List price was £875. I got it for £699 plus a couple of other things thrown in. I then took advantage of interest free option for 12 months that the shop was offering which has worked out a far far better deal for me than the B2W scheme as I put the bike money in a high interest savings account. All schemes launched by Government are not well thought through and too restrictive too many strings.

That isn't a far better deal than the bike to work scheme - alas far worse. Ignoring the extras, you have about a 15 percent discount against approx 35% on the bike to work scheme. Of course, you do have the interest free loan which I suppose might earn you 5% on the £700 which is another £35. Even if you got a comedy 10 percent that is still only £70 which gets you nowhere near 35% of B2W. Furthermore, as the bike to work scheme charges you monthly, you can put the money you haven't yet been charged into the same high interest account anyway. So, whatever you earn in interest outside the scheme is only about twice what you could earn on bike to work (if you see what I mean!) - ie if you earn £70 interest outside the scheme, you'd earn £35 in it.

So, if your bike cost £699 and earned £35 interest, it has effectively cost you £665 for an £875 bike. On the scheme, the bike would cost about £500 and earn you £17 interest therefore costing about £483. So, your freebie goodies need to be worth £182 to be ahead outside the scheme! And that assumes you couldn't get the initial discount on the scheme anyway - which you probably could in which case the bike would probably only cost you about £400 so your free gear needs to be worth £265 to break even.

It's late, I've had a long day and my maths is probably a bit off but you'd be doing extremely well to get close to the B2W discounts outside the scheme. Don't knock the scheme - it is very good and I can't see many strings!