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news
rapha aw16 2.jpgRapha signs up to Cyclescheme – and there’s a competition to win £700 of kit to celebrate
Fans of upmarket cycle clothing brand Rapha who love its clothing but not its prices can now secure discounts of between 25 and 40 per cent – provided their employer is signed up to Cycle to Work initiative provider, Cyclescheme.
With Cyclescheme certificates now available for accessories and not just bikes, and the possibility to take a fresh allowance each year, UK-based employees can make savings when shopping almost the entire Rapha range.
Items can be bought online or in Rapha Clubhouses in the UK, with the procedure outlined on the Cyclescheme website.
To celebrate the partnership, Cyclescheme has launched a competition running until 24 May, open to everyone except Rapha employees and their immediate family, with prizes of men’s and women’s commuter bundles from the London firm, each worth £700.
The Cycle to Work Scheme was amended in 2013 to allow people to buy accessories, with a £1,000 limit each year unless your employer has a consumer credit licence.
> Cycle to Work Scheme guidance allows accessories only packages
The money typically repayable by salary sacrifice over 12 months, allowing participating employees to enjoy tax breaks on the amount they have spent.
We shouldn't have to say this, but past experience shows we have to - the competition is NOT hosted here on road.cc, so there is no point sticking your virtual hand up in the comments. Instead, head over to Cyclescheme to enter.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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47 comments
too bad you're ineligible for the cyclescheme, if you're stuck on minimum wage, which really sucks, as i want access to discounted bike crap.
Not sure how enough money to buy a cap and socks will help you get to work but good on Rapha I guess.
The cycle scheme in my mind is not just about getting someone cycling to work, it's about continually enabling them to do so. To continually able them they need to be able to buy parts, accessories and kit when they run out in subsequent scheme years.
this is true, but enabling people who can 'only afford castelli' to buy rapha instead is surely not the aim. All this does is anble those already heavily invested in cycling and with plenty of means to save tax on the rapha they would be buying anyway.
when corporations follow the letter of the law to minimise their tax bill they are evil, but if wealthy cyclists do likewise all good?
Ridiculous swivel-eyed nonsense. How far gone must you be to suggest that cyclists are 'evil' for buying clothing on Cyclescheme. And yes that's exactly what you're trying to get at there.
Didn't take long for the myopic whinge to out from the very people who vote for LAB/CON politicians who cosy up to financial institutions openly.
Here's the deal. Cyclists from all industry, especially the financial industry, need to start riding to work. If you're just out of uni, that means you're on a low wage yet need to turn into work looking sharp. A lot of the workforce are on 50 to 70 hours a week, no overtime pay, and will put a lot of moaners work ethic to shame. Most financial institutions still have shockingly low rates of cyclists, yet that's the industry which is keeping the UK afloat. Rapha has the appeal to do what no other brand can do - get trendy people under the highest level of scrutiny and peer pressure to jump on a bike and ride into a highly competitive environment. Hence the expanding City collection.
At the moment, the only people who're cycling to work in these massive industries are mostly back-office, middle aged guys, who've got so many commitments that they'll rough it out and change at whatever lack of facility they can find. There's also a bit of respectability to it, which these guys care about, so that helps them deal with it. Maybe you'll find a few 20 to 30 year olds - why, because again, they're on the breadline. These ones got married, had a kid, got a mortgage, now they've got little room to move. Decent job, but left bean-counting and the next promotion is a few years away, if they get it. Heaven forbid these evil fuckers get to turn up to work looking alright, or actually get to wear something they enjoy on their commute.
And no, this pitifully small amount of money is not ever going into creating a better world, where potholes don't exist, or heated sky-high cycle lanes carry you around the country. Utter fantasy. Money for infrastructure is regional, and when you break down the Cyclescheme savings regionally, you're left with bugger all to do anything. Costs millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, to get anything done.
The original Cyclescheme was too restrictive. It needs to appeal to all types of cyclists.
Are you suggesting that only the lower income groups should be incentivised to cycle to work? Surely those are the ones who are currently more likely to use public transport to commute? Does it not make more sense from a pollution saving point of view to also incentivise those more likely to drive?
Cycle to Work is a scheme aiming to get ALL cycling to work surely?
If there's extra tax money for cycling I can think of better uses than helping people who already ride a bike buy some pink shorts
Buy a speed suit get 3mins longer in bed...
.....and lose 5mins getting into the bugger.
Nice way to reduce your tax bill though.
I can't help feeling this is not what the cycle scheme was set up for.
Agree wholeheartedly.
A couple of hundred per year for things other than a whole bike might be justifiable to cover running costs but a grand seems excessive, especially as the scheme already benefits higher rate taxpayers more.
£200? Replacement tyres for the winter and summer wheels (if you commute all year this is perfectly acceptable), add in a spare plus a few innertubes and a new cassette and you could have easily already spent this. Those are all acceptable wear and tear items within a year imho and leaves no room for the kit you need to deal with the british weather or needed accessories like pannier bags, child seats, locks etc.
If you wanted the possibility of a groupset upgrade it would blow a £200 budget out the water by itself.
Yep but not unprecedented.....when I enquired about my work scheme the cycle shop suggested I could buy buy a crappy bike and add a grand's worth of wheels if I really just wanted the wheels....its a gaming of the system
Unless the scheme rules have changed again, I thought the 'equipment-only' option introduced in 2013 was designed to allow people to buy 'safety equipment', not accessories as a whole - see the road.cc article linked above.
Again, unless this is an outdated page, Cyclescheme's own guidance to its retail partners (https://www.cyclescheme.co.uk/eops) is that safety equipment includes "reflective and high-visibility clothing and accessories" - so clothing is available on the scheme only if hi-vis or reflective so as to be considered safety equipment. I assume the same proviso is intended to apply to accessories but the wording is ambiguous.
If that's right then it doesn't apply to 'almost the entire Rapha range' as the article suggests.
Of course this probably isn't enforced and how a retailer chooses to let you use your certificate is another matter. I took my certificate from another C2W scheme to a LBS who were very happy to allow me to top it up with my own money to buy a more expensive bike, which is not technically permitted.
The hi-vis business is easy to get around - why do you think all clothes in Evans or wherever have little tiny reflective tabs on the back?
As for accessories... I know a guy who persuaded his branch of Evans to let him get a set of Garmin Vector 2 pedals on the scheme. Go figure.
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