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news
HSBC UK National Cycling Centre (picture copyright British Cycling)HSBC UK cuts 90 per cent of staff car parking to encourage workers onto bikes
HSBC UK, which has sponsored British Cycling since 2017, is to cut 90 per cent of staff car parking spaces at two new regional centres in a bid to get employees cycling.
The Sunday Times reports that nine in ten of the 700 car parking spaces at offices in Sheffield and Birmingham will disappear.
Instead, the bank, which employs 34,000 people in the UK, is spending £3 million this year on initiatives such as bike parking and changing rooms at the sites.
The newspaper says that HSBC UK is also looking for 1,280 volunteers among its staff to sign up for the Cycle Nation Project, an academic study being run by Glasgow University and Edinburgh University.
The project aims to identify barriers to cycling and will also assess issues such as activities undertaken by employees, their motivation, cardiovascular health and absenteeism.
Ian Stuart, HSBC UK’s chief executive, said that at the Birmingham headquarters, “Nobody gets a car parking space unless they have a disability.
He added: “It won’t suit everyone and I understand that. I am not a fanatical cyclist. I don’t own Lycra.”
One employee at HSBC UK’s Sheffield offices told The Sunday Times that until his car parking space was taken away, he would drive less than two miles to go to the gym.
James Royal told the newspaper that he and his partner have now rethought plans to buy a second car and that he instead cycles the four miles to the office – something that has resulted in his journey time halving to 20 minutes.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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16 comments
Companies are hilariously ironic sometimes. I work for one which is supposed to be furthering the nation's education but dropped cycle to work as 'too complicated for payroll staff to administer'. Thickos.
Seeing as we have also lost loads of bus services for local people not driving to work it's even funnier....not. A 5 mile trip on the bike would now take 75 mins on the bus as you have to go away to get a different connecting bus back in the right direction.
Don't be fooled, as Road CC appear to be. That headline should read 'HSBC UK cuts 90 per cent of staff car parking, workers encouraged onto bikes'.
The loss of car parking at the Sheffield site is a new-build cost-decision, nothing else.
Workers are also being encouraged to use public transport.
Good that HSBC are helping British Cycling out...but don't think it's some altruistic act, it's to get their damn name splattered over more physical and digital real-estate.
Rick_Rude knows the score, I'm as close...apart from the cash to BC, I wish they would get the fk away from cycling.
This is smoke and mirrors stuff. My wife works for them and this is a bullshit cover story for things as simple as losing the land lease on one site.
Usual business things of false altruism and virtue signalling hiding something mundane. Makes a nice eco friendly cycling story though.
Yes but presumably there was the option of renewing the lease? There's not much point getting rid of parking spaces and then continuing to lease the empty space - unless they are going to convert the 630 spaces in to (say) 6000 cycle parking spaces.
Even if it is just an eco friendly spin on a mundane story - is that a bad thing?
I think Rick was stating that they want to save the money and not spend it on their employees so are using the "force people to cycle and be healthy" rather then "get rid of cars to save the company money" spin. TBH that was my first thought as well but if it does mean less cars and more cyclists then that is fine.
However I don't buy the that only disabled people get parking spaces as I don't imagine to top execs will be giving up their German Maimobiles.
Well yes... if it is a company car, the company will be providing a parking space for their car (or some similar get out clause nonsense). Actually most company cars these days seem to be either EVs or PHVs (there are probably tax breaks) - so they won't be providing a 'parking space' but rather a 'charging point' (or bullshit to that effect) - in addition to a free car and free parking, the execs get free fuel too.
But they’ve only just built the building and signed a new 250 year lease according to the press reports. Unless it’s another building you’re talking about when you say “on one site”.
The brand new birmingham building definitely doesn't have 100's of car parking spaces, however they have moved from an old one 2 miles away which did. So I expect the downsizing of parking spaces takes this into account.
I thought I was being cynical for even thinking that might be the case
so I'm not sure if I'm happy for being right or unhappy that my cynicism is that accurate.
You never know it might make some companies change their approach towards better travel options
I work for another UK Bank. The waiting list for car parking spaces in my location is roughly 3x the total number of available spaces. It would be more, only a lot of people realise they will never get to the front of the queue (if only the same was true about them being in traffic!). There are about 200 cycle racks and about 350 car spaces.
Nonetheless, through sensible and rational negotiation we've just had 3 car spaces turned over to additional bike parking, where we've fitted in 39 racks. There are never going to be enough car spaces to satisfy all those wishing to drive, so giving up less than 1% for an 11% increase in cycle parking is a no-brainer. The tide is turning, not as quick as we'd like but it is happening.
I work for a bank that used to sponsor a pro team and the TdF jerseys. There's plenty of cycle parking in the basement, but a waiting list of many months because, for some unfathomable reason, the person who runs it reckons that it is over capacity (I've never seen it more than half full).
So, sometimes, even when the company is willing to support riding to work, a little bit of job-justifying officialdom is all that's required to spoil things for everyone.
The adjoining car park, which covers about twenty times the area reserved for bike parking, is barely used at all; around 25% utilised. However, when you ask if there are any plans to resolve the bike park's "capacity issues" by entending it into the space used by cars, the answer is... well, you can guess can't you.
Sigh.
Under Basel III reserve requirements banks have to have car/bike parks mostly empty.
Under-rated comment!
It seems a shame that it takes a step like this for the employee to realise that cycling 2 miles to the office is twice as fast as a car.
The Birmingham office is centrally located and traffic around there is a nightmare. Central Birmingham is the one place I’ve been where it is most blindingly obvious that almost any other mode of transport is quicker than the car.
Paradoxically, nightmare traffic is doubtless one of the major reasons people don't want to cycle in the first place. Few start out as a keen and fearless cyclist.
The news is finally penetrating the establishment, if such a huge company can take such radical steps, and hats off to them. We can only hope that the rest of the monolithic, proft-obsessed British companies take note and do the same. Some have already taken tiny steps in this direction, and some small companies have done much more, but this is easily the biggest national company to do something so dramatic. If the benefits are as much as predicted, we might finally see society changing, driven by the private sector, not, sadly, by the government.