Cycle To Work scheme

Cycle to Work Scheme at UKAEA

(Last updated October 2023)

If your company is signed up to a Cycle to Work Scheme, you can save 25-39% on your new bike.

How it works

The UKAEA Cycle to Work Scheme (link to nucleus - N/A to non-UKAEA employees) is administered through Cyclescheme. This is how the Cyclescheme works.

The details of how much you would save using the certificate (as opposed to paying out of pocket) can be calculated using the calculator

Should I underestimate or overestimate my bike purchase value, when making my Cycle To Work Scheme application?

The approval process may take up to a month, in which you may change your mind about what bike to get, or the price of the bike may change, or you may realize you want more/fewer bike accessories. It is possible to undo a bike certificate request as long as the certificate isn't spent yet; but it would lengthen the waiting time as you have to effectively start a completely new application, going through all 4 steps above, which means you will wait for up to 2 weeks for it to go through (or more if the finance department is busy).

Now, as the unused value of the certificate would be wasted (i.e. Use It or Lose It), it is best to underestimate the value of your bike purchase than it is to overestimate it, so that you won't end up having too much of your salary deducted without being able to utilize that value.

The difference between "Cycle To Work Scheme", "Cyclescheme", and "Cycle2Work" etc.

Lexically these terms have negligible differences, but practically their differences cannot be ignored. The umbrella term Cycle To Work schemes is a list of salary-sacrifice schemes approved by Sustrans and HMRC for employee to buy bikes at a reduced cost.

Within the list of "Cycle To Work schemes", UKAEA is signed up to the Cyclescheme. This is distinct from (and therefore excludes) the Cycle2Work scheme provided by Halfords. Therefore, as a UKAEA employee (as of Oct. 2023) you cannot redeem the cycle scheme voucher in Halfords. (However, you can still buy bikes from Tredz, which sells all the same brands of bikes as Halfords, as Tredz is one of the selected retailers in the Cyclescheme.)

The confusingly named "Cyclescheme" that UKAEA is signed up to is one of the many schemes available in the set of Cycle To Work schemes approved by Sustrans.

Cycle To Work scheme at other companies at Culham

We currently don't have any information on how other tenant companies on the Culham site use the Cycle To Work scheme. However, the process should be similar. If you would like to write for this section of the website, please get in touch with us using one of the @culbug.uk email addresses.