People should receive £250 a year in tax breaks if they cycle to work, according to a proposal to improve public health and business productivity backed by some of the UK’s biggest companies and the Paralympian Dame Sarah Storey.
According to a report published by British Cycling, businesses should be able to claim back in tax up to £100,000 in construction works such as bike parking, showers or other cyclist facilities.
The study, written by tax barrister Jolyon Maugham QC, was produced for British Cycling’s Choose Cycling network of businesses, whose supporters include Tesco, GSK, Santander and Coca-Cola.
The campaign has received support from Storey – her first involvement into agitating for everyday cycling after reaching 14 gold medals at the Rio Paralympics earlier this year, having won three golds on the road and one in the velodrome.
“Britain’s businesses have woken up to the benefits that cycling can bring to their employees and it’s about time that the government followed suit,” Storey said.
“It’s only right that if a company invests heavily in providing high quality changing and bike storage facilities – things that will help our nation become healthier and fitter – that they should get a tax incentive for it.”
The plan would see those who mostly cycle to work for a period of at least 10 months a year, claim a £250 tax rebate. Their commute would be monitored by a downloadable phone app.
The report suggests limiting people’s claims to two years and estimates the plan would initially cost the Treasury about £120m a year, a sum that would gradually drop.
Companies which install bike parking or other facilities would be able to claim 100% of the costs of up to £100,000 in the first year they were built. This expenditure was calculated to about £50m a year.
British Cycling, which is in charge of sports cycling but has branched out in recent years into campaigning for measures to boost everyday riding, noted that government support for bike-related regulation was set to fall to less than £1 per head or 0.3% of the total transport budget.
While levels of cycling have risen in some places, notably London, the amount of bike trips remains largely static across the UK at about 1% to 2% of all journeys.
Chris Boardman, the Olympic and Tour de France cyclist who is now British Cycling’s policy adviser, said measures to get more people on bikes would more than pay for themselves.
“If more people cycled to work regularly, the government would save millions on squeezed NHS budgets and our roads would be much less congested,” he said. “That in itself would more than pay for a £250 tax break and would provide a real incentive for people to live more active lives.”
