Christmas is fast approaching (gulp), and that means only one thing… in podcast land, anyway – it’s time for us to don our best paper party hats, break open the archives, and reflect on the biggest cycling stories of 2025. Proper festive fare, I know. Well, I suppose you need something to offer a distraction from your relatives over the next week, don’t you?
And it’s safe to say one of the most important, and potentially consequential, stories of the year revolved around the Cycle to Work scheme.
Back at the start of November, seemingly out of the blue, it was first reported in the Financial Times that Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves was planning to limit how much users of the Cycle to Work scheme could spend on bikes and other cycling equipment as part of the government’s Autumn Budget.
According to one government source, Labour ministers believe that the decision to lift the original £1,000 by the Conservatives in 2019 was not the best use of public funds, with one source concluding that “taxpayers shouldn’t be footing the bill for luxury leisure”.
“Cycle to Work should be about helping ordinary commuters switch to greener travel, not giving tax breaks to high earners buying £4,000 e-bikes for weekend rides in the Surrey Hills,” the government source reportedly said.
However, when the Budget was finally announced – or leaked, as proved the case – Cycle to Work was nowhere to be seen, the FT’s source later admitting that the government had decided, at the last second, that any new cap, and the potential backlash it could spark, was simply not “worth the revenue”.
Cyclists in London talking in cycle lane (credit: Simon MacMichael)
But the government didn’t come to that conclusion on its own. In the four weeks between the FT’s original report and the Budget being announced, a number of cycling industry groups, including the Cycle to Work Alliance, an organisation representing the scheme’s five largest providers, ‘mobilised’ to ensure that the scheme would remain as it is.
On this week’s episode, the Cycle to Work Alliance’s chair Steve Edgell joins Ryan and Jack to discuss that fraught, busy month, the harmful effects any potential new cap would have had on Cycle to Work, and how the alliance strove to make a “compelling case” that limiting purchases made as part of the scheme failed to make any economic sense.
Steve also chats about the support for Cycle to Work, despite the assertions of the FT’s Labour source, within the government, how it is key to attracting new cycling converts (especially when it comes to making e-bikes accessible), and why the alliance is working hard to “dispel the myth” that Cycle to Work is catered to rich MAMILs in the Surrey Hills.
Meanwhile, in part one, Ryan, Jack, Dan, and Emily sign off for the year by assessing some of the other big stories from the worlds racing, tech, infrastructure, politics.
In classic road.cc style, these ranged from protests at the Vuelta, sportswashing, TNT Sports, ITV’s last Tour, the UCI’s tech regulations, Factor’s fancy new bike, France winning the Tour, cycle lane chaos… and whether Oscar Onley’s just-announced transfer to the Ineos Grenadiers will prove a success.
Happy Christmas! We’ll catch you on the podcast in the new year – we’ve got lots of cool stuff lined up, so stay tuned…
The road.cc Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon Music, and if you have an Alexa you can just tell it to play the road.cc Podcast. It’s also embedded above, so you can just press play.