Green Transport Plan

On Fri, 6 Feb, Michael wrote:
I've been exploring the possibility of buying a bike through the
government's Green Transport Plan (see Evans Cycles' Ride2Work scheme
http://www.evanscycles.com/ride2work ). I contacted the HR of my employer
(a university) who after a couple of exchanges said:

HR has had the issue of salary sacrifice arrangements for the
acquisition of cycles under review for some time and have outline
agreement with a supplier. They can be administratively complex as
you indicate but the real concern is approval from HMRC. To be able
to run these you need to make the arrangement available to all staff,
otherwise the tax and NI free status of the scheme falls and everyone
loses out. We do have categories of employees who would potentially
be unable to take part. As the rules currently stand we cannot
restrict the offer of such a scheme to limited groups whilst retaining
tax free status. A working group between HMRC, the CBI and other large
employer groups is currently deliberating this issue and they have no
date for resolution that we are currently aware of.

Operators of schemes are downplaying this issue for their own
commercial reasons!

I would think that by 'categories of employees who would potentially be
unable to take part' they are referring to employees with certain
disabilities. If this is true, I don't see how any employers other than
the really small ones can possibly take advantage of the GTP.

On which basis alone it sounds like baloney.

The other thing that indicates that they don't know what they are
talking about is the implication that you need an operator for the
scheme - you don't.

If there are rules internal to your employer that say they will not
offer salary sacrifice schemes to people until they've been employed
three years, or reached pay grade 14b or something else, then no, they
can't offer the cycle to work scheme to anyone. Otherwise, I think
they think you'll be put off if the huff and puff a bit and mention
important sounding people like the CBI.

Ask them what category of employee they cannot offer it to, and why
they cannot offer it to that category of employee.

regards, Ian SMith
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On 06 Feb 2009 22:00:15 GMT, Ian Smith wrote:

On Fri, 6 Feb, Michael wrote:
I've been exploring the possibility of buying a bike through the
government's Green Transport Plan (see Evans Cycles' Ride2Work scheme
http://www.evanscycles.com/ride2work ). I contacted the HR of my employer
(a university) who after a couple of exchanges said:

HR has had the issue of salary sacrifice arrangements for the
acquisition of cycles under review for some time and have outline
agreement with a supplier. They can be administratively complex as
you indicate but the real concern is approval from HMRC. To be able
to run these you need to make the arrangement available to all staff,
otherwise the tax and NI free status of the scheme falls and everyone
loses out. We do have categories of employees who would potentially
be unable to take part. As the rules currently stand we cannot
restrict the offer of such a scheme to limited groups whilst retaining
tax free status. A working group between HMRC, the CBI and other large
employer groups is currently deliberating this issue and they have no
date for resolution that we are currently aware of.

Operators of schemes are downplaying this issue for their own
commercial reasons!

I would think that by 'categories of employees who would potentially be
unable to take part' they are referring to employees with certain
disabilities. If this is true, I don't see how any employers other than
the really small ones can possibly take advantage of the GTP.

On which basis alone it sounds like baloney.

The other thing that indicates that they don't know what they are
talking about is the implication that you need an operator for the
scheme - you don't.

Now who would I believe on this - the HR department of an institution
employing probably more than a thousand people - who have nothing to
lose by keeping staff happy - or a ****wit on a newsgroup who reckons
that the Highway Code endorses filtering.................... now
that's a difficult one.



--
I encourage my children to wear helmets. (Guy Chapman)
I have never said that I encourage my children to wear helmets. (Guy
Chapman)
I would challenge judith to find the place where I said I encourage
my children to wear helmets. (Guy Chapman)
I pointed out the web page
He then quickly changed the web page - but "forgot" to change the date
of last amendment so it looked like the change had been there for
years.