{"id":334321,"date":"2025-12-25T03:27:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-25T03:27:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/334321\/"},"modified":"2025-12-25T03:27:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-25T03:27:13","slug":"how-cycle-to-work-was-saved-the-battle-to-stop-labours-budget-spending-cap-the-year-in-cycling-reviewed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/334321\/","title":{"rendered":"How Cycle to Work was saved: The battle to stop Labour\u2019s Budget spending cap + The year in cycling reviewed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christmas is fast approaching (gulp), and that means only one thing\u2026 in podcast land, anyway \u2013 it\u2019s 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\u2019t you?<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s safe to say one of the most important, and potentially consequential, stories of the year revolved around the Cycle to Work scheme.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> and other cycling equipment as part of the government\u2019s Autumn Budget.<\/p>\n

According to one government source, Labour ministers believe that the decision to lift the original \u00a31,000 by the Conservatives in 2019 was not the best use of public funds, with one source concluding that \u201ctaxpayers shouldn\u2019t be footing the bill for luxury leisure\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cCycle to Work should be about helping ordinary commuters switch to greener travel, not giving tax breaks to high earners buying \u00a34,000 e-bikes for weekend rides in the Surrey Hills,\u201d the government source reportedly said.<\/p>\n

However, when the Budget was finally announced \u2013 or leaked, as proved the case \u2013 Cycle to Work was nowhere to be seen, the FT\u2019s 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 \u201cworth the revenue\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"CyclistsCyclists in London talking in cycle lane (credit: Simon MacMichael)<\/p>\n

But the government didn\u2019t come to that conclusion on its own. In the four weeks between the FT\u2019s original report and the Budget being announced, a number of cycling industry groups, including the Cycle to Work Alliance, an organisation representing the scheme\u2019s five largest providers, \u2018mobilised\u2019 to ensure that the scheme would remain as it is.<\/p>\n

On this week\u2019s episode, the Cycle to Work Alliance\u2019s 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 \u201ccompelling case\u201d that limiting purchases made as part of the scheme failed to make any economic sense.<\/p>\n

Steve also chats about the support for Cycle to Work, despite the assertions of the FT\u2019s 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 \u201cdispel the myth\u201d that Cycle to Work is catered to rich MAMILs in the Surrey Hills.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

In classic road.cc style, these ranged from protests at the Vuelta, sportswashing, TNT Sports, ITV\u2019s last Tour, the UCI\u2019s tech regulations, Factor\u2019s fancy new bike, France winning the Tour, cycle lane chaos\u2026 and whether Oscar Onley\u2019s just-announced transfer to the Ineos Grenadiers <\/a>will prove a success.<\/p>\n

Happy Christmas! We\u2019ll catch you on the podcast in the new year \u2013 we\u2019ve got lots of cool stuff lined up, so stay tuned\u2026<\/p>\n

The\u00a0road.cc\u00a0Podcast is available on\u00a0Apple Podcasts<\/a>,\u00a0Spotify<\/a>, and\u00a0Amazon Music<\/a>, and if you have an Alexa you can just tell it to play the\u00a0road.cc\u00a0Podcast. It\u2019s also embedded above, so you can just press play.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Christmas is fast approaching (gulp), and that means only one thing\u2026 in podcast land, anyway \u2013 it\u2019s time…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":334322,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-334321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=334321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334321\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/334322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}