This year’s Cycle to Work Day took place on Thursday 3rd September, a national event aiming to encourage everyone to take to two wheels and cycle to work for just one day.
The number of pledging riders and miles ridden was nearly doubled, and the number of employers participating more than doubled from last year’s Cycle to Work Day.
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32,763 riders in 2015 compared to 17,472 riders in 2014
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489,674 miles in 2015 compared to 261,315 miles in 2014
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872 employers in 2015 compared to 394 employers in 2014
All across the UK, hundreds of employers representing 1,043,965 staff joined in a day devoted to celebrating utility cycling and boosting health and wellbeing in the UK. Employers who took part include Tesco, Halls of Scotland, Aberystwyth University, The Landmark Practice, Good Energy, Danco plc, Retail Assist, Bike & Go, Cambourne Business Park, Cornish Mutual, and Councils such as Hartlepool Borough and Bath and North-East Somerset.
Activities taking place on Cycle to Work Day range from TfL giving free access to Santander Cycles in London, Britain’s Biggest Bike Breakfast – offering colleagues a coffee and croissant, or a juice and fruit, after cycling to work – to arranging guided rides, Dr. Bike sessions – trained mechanics or enthusiastic cyclists who perform ‘health checks’ on bikes – to competitions for staff to win cycling prizes.
Venues for activities included a free bike breakfast and servicing at one of London’s famous markets, Spitalfields in East London, to a bike-in cinema at Northern Monk Brew Co. in Leeds and a free bike breakfast at The Tiny Tea Room in Rodley, along the picturesque Leeds to Liverpool canal.
Cycle to Work Day have publicly thanked all the independent bike shop retailers from across the UK for their support and who offered Free Bike Health Checks, or MOTs for bikes. A few of the retailers who took part in the day include Chain Reaction Cycles, Primera Sports, AW Cycles, Go Outdoors, Giant, Ben Hayward Cycles, Edinburgh Bicycle Cooperative, Broadribbs, Chevin Cycles, Wiggle, Cycle Surgery, Leisure Lakes, Hargroves, Dales Cycles and JE James Cycles.
Social media highlights on Cycle to Work Day include trending on Twitter for 8 hours, with 24,697 tweets with a reach of over 45 million, 1,000 stories shared on Facebook, and the organisers receiving over 5,000 photos.
Cycle to Work Day featured on dozens of UK TV and radio programmes with Denise Van Outen, television presenter and an enthusiastic cyclist who has completed charity rides in India, Vietnam and Cambodia, and Sir Cary Cooper, professor of organisational psychology and health at Manchester Business School who provided expert analysis on Cyclescheme’s poll of over 1,000 people about the relationship between work and health and wellbeing.
Competition winners are Ade Roberts, Lee Burling and Ginnette Richell, who each win a Claud Butler bike for pledging to ride on Cycle to Work Day; Joel Ryan who wins a free 12 month membership to FitnessFirst.com, a leading health and fitness club who provided free showers at all of its UK gyms on Cycle to Work Day for riders; and Laura Weatherill and Vincent Campbell who each win a Claud Butler bike for the best photos taken on Cycle to Work Day itself, as judged by Elaine Curtain of road.cc, a leading cycling magazine.
Launched by Cyclescheme.co.uk, the UK’s leading cycle to work provider, the campaign aim is to see a million people get on their bikes to work by 2021 and is supported by British Cycling, Santander Cycles, Sustrans, the Bicycle Association, Act TravelWise, CTC and the London Cycling Campaign.
Cyclescheme Ltd began life in Bath in 2005 as a small tax-free cycle to work provider, born out of the Government’s green transport plan to get people healthier and greener by regularly cycling to work. Ten years later, working within the Grass Roots Group, Cyclescheme Ltd has grown to become the UK’s leading cycle to work provider, working with over 2,000 retailers, servicing over 30,000 companies and helping more than half a million people to save money on a new bike. The company has diversified, offering further salary sacrifice employee benefits through Computingscheme for IT equipment, and Childcarescheme for childcare.
A salary sacrifice cycle to work benefit enables employees to save money on a new bike and/or cycling safety accessories through an employer. The savings are made from an employee’s Income Tax and National Insurance Contributions while spreading the cost over a defined period of time from 12 months upwards. Any company of any size can offer a cycle to work scheme to employees who pay tax via PAYE (monthly from their wages). Employers make savings on Employer National Insurance Contributions.
Cycle to Work Day 2015 Pledge Statistics
32,763 riders (17,472 in 2014)
489,674 miles (261,315 in 2014)
872 employers representing 1,043,965 staff (394 employers in 2014)
460 Independent Retailers
