Cycle to work scheme

It seems to be working fine. Are you multiplying the "monthly cost to you" by 48 months instead of 12? The hire period is 12 months regardless of whether you select "4 years"(own it later) or "1 year" (own it now) in the calculator. Choosing the "own it later" reduces the ownership fee.

No there is definitely something wrong with it. Why would the hire period be fixed at 12 months? If I do the same thing with the Evans calc for 48 months, the monthly cost is a quarter of what the Cyclescheme one is.

https://www.evanscycles.com/b2b/ride-to-work/savings-calculator

Unless you can only pay it off in a year via Cyclescheme?

So you can spread it out longer.

https://help.cyclescheme.co.uk/article/191-can-you-offer-18-24-or-36-months-terms-on-the-cycle-to-work-scheme

The Cyclesheme calculator is only designed for the case where the salary sacrifice (hire) period is 12 months (which is the default period for the scheme). If you hover over the question mark next to "when do you want to own your package?" (where you select "4 years" or "1 year"), it says: "At the end of your Hire Period you will need to select an Ownership Option. We recommend you choose the 4 year ‘Own it Later’ option as this will increase your savings." This option has an effect on the overall cost (the 1 year option is more expensive). There is no option in the Cyclescheme calculator to vary the salary sacrifice period.

Yep, you essentially pay for the hire over 1-year on Cyclescheme regardless, but have the (recommended) option to set the hire period for transfer of ownership after 4-years. This reduces the value of the bike when you ‘buy’ it out of the scheme, so makes it cheaper overall. You still pay the bubble fee after a year, however.

Silly question, why is there this initial hire period followed by second agreement for an extended hire period? Why can't the entire period be agreed at the outset? What's the tax reason?

My NHS Trust employer has outsourced to a company with terms only for the initial hire period, at the end of which it says you will enter into a second agreement to extend the hire period, but there's no information on this second agreement anywhere. They just say to email them.

I emailed this query to them and they say there will be no extra cost, but the terms which you actually sign make it possible to charge anything or lose the bike.

There is no option in the Cyclescheme calculator to vary the salary sacrifice period.

OK. But with other schemes there is?

but the terms which you actually sign make it possible to charge anything or lose the bike.

This is why I’ve only done it once.

The language seems really wooly and once you factor in (generally) only being able to buy stuff that’s at full rrp the savings get less and less worthwhile.

I didn’t pay any final ‘fair market value’ payment when I did do it but I kinda presume that was an admin error on the part of the company I work for and you can’t rely on that.

I think that's the point of the 4 year thing.
You salary sacrifice for 12 months and then rather than paying to buy the bike, you agree to hire it for another 3 years, you don't pay anything to do so and by the 4 years is up, it's written off so you don't pay a fee
Or something

That's my understanding, that the regs require you to pay 'fair market' for it after the hire period, and by 4 years they're saying it's basically worthless

They should see the way I treat my stuff, shit’s worthless in a lot less than 4 years!

Has anyone ever had to pay the fair market value after 12 months? Doesn't everyone just take it home and that's it?

Yep, every time through my employer, using cyclescheme. Can select the 4-year deferral on value, which makes it cheaper, but you pay up immediately.

My employer says that I can do 24 months with cyclescheme.

My trust uses Vivup - is yours the same? They gave me the option of paying 25% after 12 months and owning the bike, or 10% and extending the hire period for 3 years.

Yep mine is Vivup too, good to know they apply those charges. On top of charging the max they can to the owner, they also charge the retailer the max admin charge of 12%, apparently all other schemes charge 4-6% max.

I went to get the C2W from Fully Charged and the guy's face dropped when I said my Trust uses Vivup. FC pass the extra 6% onto the customer unfortunately, but he said that any employer can do an "instant green commute initiative" process so I'm going to try and persuade someone in Payroll to do that instead.

FC pass the extra 6% onto the customer unfortunately

I'm pretty sure they're not allowed to do that

loads of places do it. sigma, fairlight...

Did surprise me, but so does a lot about C2W schemes

It's still not allowed

Not allowed ≠ does not happen.

Clearly, which is why we're having this conversation

Hah I hope your HR/Payroll is more efficient than mine. I haven’t been paid for the locums I did 4 months ago.

Lo and behold "Thank you for your feedback but we are unable to process an invoice from GCI at this time."

My Feedback being that Vivup will cost me £610 in fees while GCI will cost me £1 and entail no extra admin for the Employer.

This from the "Green Travel Team" who offer a salary sacrifice scheme for cars only!

Hey,
has anyone used cycle solutions? https://cycletowork.cyclesolutions.co.uk/
my employer (uni) has this agreement with them but the website seems always down...

thanks