Cycle to Work Scheme

It’s a salary-sacrifice scheme run through your employer. You choose a bike, your employer pays for it, and you repay the cost from your gross salary over an agreed period — usually 12 to 18 months. Because the payments come out before tax and National Insurance, you save roughly 28% as a basic-rate taxpayer, 42% at the higher rate, and up to 47% at the additional rate, and the bike is yours to ride from day one.

There’s no government limit. The old £1,000 cap was scrapped in 2019, and your employer now sets the maximum — many set none at all. That means you can put a higher-value e-bike, family bike or cargo bike through the scheme, which is exactly what most people come to us for. It’s worth checking your employer’s limit before you choose.

We work with the major providers: Cyclescheme, Green Commute Initiative, Cycle2Work, Vivup, Bike2Work Scheme and Gogeta. If your employer uses a different provider, ask us — we can usually work with it.

It depends on your tax band. As a rule of thumb you save around 28% at the basic rate, 42% at the higher rate, and up to 47% at the additional rate, because the payments come out of your salary before tax and National Insurance.

The percentage is the same whatever the bike costs — but the saving in pounds grows with the price, which is why the scheme is especially worthwhile on a good e-bike or cargo bike. Try the savings calculator on this page for an estimate on a specific bike.

You hire the bike during the agreement, then keep it at the end. How that final step works varies by provider — some, like Green Commute Initiative, charge only a nominal amount to transfer ownership, while others take a small percentage of the bike’s value. Either way, the bike is yours to ride throughout and stays yours afterwards, and your provider will spell out the exact end-of-scheme step and any fee before you start.

Usually, yes. Most schemes let you include safety and commuting kit bought at the same time — a helmet, lights, locks, mudguards, a rack or panniers — up to your employer’s limit. Tell us what you need when you choose the bike and we’ll put it all on the one application.

If you’re employed and paid through PAYE — the normal way tax comes out of your wages before they reach you — and your employer offers a Cycle to Work scheme, you can almost certainly take part. Most employees can. The one condition is that the monthly payments can’t take your pay below the minimum wage.

The people who usually miss out are the self-employed and sole traders, who are taxed a different way. If you run your own limited company and pay yourself a salary through PAYE, you can normally still join. Not sure whether your workplace has a scheme? Ask your HR or payroll team, or just ask us and we’ll help you find out — many employers can sign up in a day or two.

There’s no need to clock your rides or hit a set number of days. The only guideline is that the bike should be used mainly — roughly half the time or more — for getting to and from work. Nobody checks your mileage, and you’re free to use it for the school run, nipping to the shops or weekend rides the rest of the time.

In practice, if you’re commuting on it fairly regularly you’re comfortably within the rules. The scheme is there to get more people cycling, not to keep tabs on you.

You spread the cost over a set period — most commonly 12 to 18 months — with the payments coming out of your salary a little at a time. Your employer and their scheme provider set the exact length, so it can be a bit shorter or longer.

For a pricier e-bike or cargo bike, a longer period simply means smaller monthly payments, which makes those bikes far more manageable — one of the reasons the scheme works so well for the kind of bikes we sell. You’ll always see the term and your exact monthly amount before you agree to anything.

If you change jobs before the payments are finished, you just pay off whatever’s left. That final bit usually comes out of your last pay packet after tax, so the tax saving doesn’t apply to that remaining amount — but there’s nothing complicated to sort out.

From there you can keep the bike (there may be a small closing payment based on how old it is), hand it back, or in some cases carry the agreement over to a new employer. Your scheme provider will walk you through whichever applies to you.

You can, as long as each bike is genuinely for your own commute — a common example is keeping one at each end of a train journey. What you can’t do is put a bike through the scheme for a partner or child, because the savings depend on you being the one riding it to work.

And if you’ve had a bike on the scheme before, that’s no problem — once the first agreement has run its course, you can usually start a fresh one for your next bike.

Usually not if you’re a sole trader. The scheme works by taking payments from a PAYE salary before tax, and sole traders are taxed through Self Assessment instead, so there’s no salary to sacrifice. If you run your own limited company and pay yourself a salary through PAYE, you can normally take part as both the employer and the employee — just keep an eye on the minimum-wage rule, as a low salary topped up with dividends often doesn’t leave enough pay to sacrifice.

If Cycle to Work doesn’t fit, there’s often another route: a bike used for your work can usually be put through the business as an expense, with the VAT reclaimed if you’re VAT-registered. That’s separate from the scheme and worth confirming with your accountant. Either way, come and talk to us — we can help you choose the right bike whichever way you end up buying it.

Then it’s worth asking them to set one up — it’s quick and completely free for an employer to join, and providers like Green Commute Initiative specialise in getting new employers on board, often within a few days.

It’s an easy ask, because your employer benefits too: they pay less National Insurance on the salary you sacrifice. Tell us where you work and we can point you and your employer towards the right provider to get started.

No — it’s free for your employer to run the scheme, and they actually save money on it. Because your salary sacrifice lowers your gross pay, your employer pays less employer National Insurance (currently 15%) on the amount you sacrifice.

The cost of the bike is recovered from your salary over the term, so there’s no lasting cost to them. It’s a useful point to mention if your workplace hasn’t set up a scheme yet.

In most cases, no — we absorb the commission the scheme provider charges us, so the price you see is the price that goes through Cycle to Work. That isn’t true of every retailer, so it’s worth checking wherever you buy.

There are a few exceptions where a small surcharge can apply — for example on some already-discounted bikes, where a sale price can’t absorb the provider’s commission. If anything like that affects the bike you’ve chosen, we’ll always tell you upfront, before you commit.

It depends on your employer and provider — sometimes approval comes through within a day, sometimes it takes a week or two.

If you’ve already chosen your bike, just ask — we can usually set it aside while your application goes through, so the one you want is still here when your voucher arrives.