Working hours - travel to work time within contracted hours?

[FoxRedBitch]

If your job entailed going out to do you job (i.e sales person) and your working hours are say 1pm until 7pm. Would you expect for your travel time to your first appointment to be after 1pm, or would you expect to leave home at 1pm?

With regards to distance, this varies up to a maximum of about 30 minutes.

Any thoughts?

If she has no fixed place of work then travel time is work time.

Does it specify in her contract that she is field based or a home worker?

Travel time would be included within my working hours if its outwith my usual office.

So a 1pm meeting, half hour away, I'd be starting work at 12:30. Likewise for the jounery home, say the meeting lasted 1 hour, plus 30muns travel home, finish time would be 230pm. 2 hours paid work total, 1230-2:30pm inclusive.

I'm on an annualised hours contract, it also explicitly states that I start to be paid from the moment I leave my house. But if I had an appointment at 1 pm I would leave at 12:30 to get there in time (or whenever would be the correct travelling time).

I assume from your update that her contacted place of work is your registered office. If that's the case then I would expect her to travel to there on her own time, then start work.

Or travel directly to the first appointment but deduct the commute to the registered office from her timesheet.

Interesting. I am contracted to teach on my home site but have to travel a 80 minutes journey (each way) to teach elsewhere on a different site. Should my traveling be part of my working hours?

@wantmorenow if you are contracted to one place but have to travel to another, then you have to deduct the number of miles you would usually commute, and then you can claim the rest as additional travel.

E.g. if my usual office is 10 miles away and they want me to travel 25 miles somewhere else, then I can only claim for the additional 15 miles.

However this only works if it's not your habitual place of work - as there are tax rules around what can be claimed. If your contract specifies one place of work, but you are always travelling somewhere else instead, then your contract needs to be changed to reflect this. Basically they cannot say your office is in Edinburgh if you always travel to the Glasgow premises - Glasgow is your habitual place of work IYSWIM?

Thanks. Get mileage no problems, albeit a lowish rate. It's the extra two days (sometimes 3) travelling time that kills me. Adds an extra 6 or 9 hours to an already long working week. Teaching. ☹️

wantmorenow if it's your own car and you don't get a car allowance then it should be 45p per mile for the first 10K miles in a financial year.

That's the approved amount, it's not mandatory. We get less. We can claim tax back on the difference. Not great.

It doesn’t HAVE to be 45p per mile. If you get less though you can claim the difference as a work expense on your tax return and recover it that way.

www.gosimpletax.com/blog/car-mileage-allowance/

It doesn’t HAVE to be 45p per mile. If you get less though you can claim the difference as a work expense on your tax return and recover it that way.

You can claim the TAX on the difference. Not the whole of the difference.

You’d be better posting in the Employment Issues board, OP. Most on AIBU/chat don’t know much about employment law.