community nhs- car expenses getting me down

[mumtobe9]

I have been working in the community for the last 2 years (prior to this i was in a hospital). Apart from the obvious differences between working in a hospital and the community (ie entering Covid patient's houses and later returning to my family car with the same shoes, uniform... my DC will be getting into that car later on!), i am getting fed up with the fact that we have to go through significantly more expenses than compared to someone based on one site (being hospital, care home, etc).

Yes we are paid a mileage, which is 56p per mile and we are deducted abut of tax after that. Nevertheless, i dont feel that that covers for all the wear and tear and high risk of accidents that you put yourself to when visiting many patients a day. I had to take extra business cover in my insurance that was about 15 pounds extra a month. Then the decrease in value of the car, extra servicing you have to do (changing oil, tires more often that you did if you didn't use the care as much) you cannot buy the car you like but the one thats more practical for your work (ie, to carry equipment).... I drive in good neighbourhoods, bad neighbourhoods, up the hills/outskirts with bendy roads full of potholes... I had a flat tyre a few months ago, another car scratched my car while i was inside patient's home and now my car has broken down. 2 mechanics have advised me not to drive it but they dont have any slots free until January. Another one has one slot just before new years eve. The car is just 5 years old but i bought it 1.5 years ago in perfect condition.
My insurance won't give me a courtesy car, my manager said he can facilitate 1 day max working on the office, however i will have to rent a car for next week as i am one of the very few nurses working through Christmas and they counted on me to plan the holiday cover.
Im fed up, i feel i have worn out my "new" car after not even 2 years and now i will have to spend 3k in a new gearbox or buy a new car in a rush. I dont even want to buy an expensive car because its going to get run over in 6 months time.

The NHS should give us a company car or an extra insurance policy to cover for a courtesy car should you need it. If i was to have a car accident at work, my car insurance would go up to the roof and nobody else would cover that cost.

is there an equality issue here? "Static" staff in my trust are having free parking and free bus transport since the beginning of the pandemic. I can't understand why this has never been raised before by unions, or maybe i am just very unlucky?

You should only be getting taxed on 11p a mile of the 56 at least for the first 10,000 miles, so it's 54p not 56 but the rest of the point still stands.

You can't complain that your organisation doesn't pay enough for you to have car accidents, that's absurd. If you don't have enough time between jobs you need to make that point with your work.

I can see it's annoying that your car has broken down, but sometimes that happens, it's not necessarily been caused by your job. I have driven tens of thousands of miles for my work, and haven't had an accident or broken down. That was good luck. You've had bad luck, but that's not your employer's fault. I chose to drive a cheap, older car so my mileage was easily covering my depreciation and service costs. My friends who drive cars that are under 5 years old are choosing to pay more in depreciation because they want a newer car. That's not my employers problem.

Our trust used to give us £60 a month for wear and tear plus the mileage allowance. They took the £60 a month from us but increased the mileage 'generously' so according to them it was even. However since then petrol prices have increased ( I know this year they have decreased) and they haven't adjusted the mileage to accommodate this. We were fobbed off and now nobody is fighting to have the monthly payment back.

I don't understand why they don't have a fleet of pool cars for district nurses that we use and just scrap mileage altogether. Surely it'll balance out cost wise?

My only marginally useful comment is that if you lease an electric car via a work scheme it is tax and NI exempt!

I have business milage and it doesn't cost anymore than not having.

Petrol costs about 0.15-0.20 a mile (admittedly we have small cars, I don't know price per mile for big cars). You are taxed on mileage above 0.45p so you are paying tax on 0.11p a mile - so about 0.02. That leaves at least 0.34p a mile 'profit'. How many miles are you doing a month to have caused that much damage? Have you not been saving the 'profit' of your milage as that would have been a good idea to use to pay for the extra wear and tear.

10 miles a day (which isn't excessive, my DH drives double that just normal home to base milage) is 200 miles a month - the profit based on above figures is nearly £70 a month. That more than half the monthly cost of paying for my car payment.

I just don't think you are using your expenses for what they are for.

I trained and worked abroad before coming to the U.K. and was very surprised that there were not hospital cars or work mobile phones for when working in the community. Back home we got a car and work phone when I worked district nursing.
I have often wanted to apply for community palliative care nurse roles but I’m not willing to use my car for work. It’s too valuable for us for it to be out of order because of the extra risk using it at work.

Sorry OP but enough to cover car accidents isn’t a valid point. In this role, I have a work vehicle but if I get into a car crash in my work vehicle, I still need to declare it on my personal car insurance and the premiums would inflate accordingly. No employer is going to cover you for you the possibility that you might get into a car crash, they will assume you are a competent driver and they verify that by checking your licence. Even if you go into the company lease car scheme, they aren’t going to calculate the costs based on if you have an accident.

In my previous job, I was paid 45p per mile and had to go down some horrible roads (fen droves) in my own car. A colleague’s car knackered the suspension when they were driving along these roads in between meetings. Most of my colleagues, from this role and previous roles, always have PPE stored in their cars. It’s a hazard of the job sometimes. Unfortunately, these are the issues with jobs that require a lot of travelling.

My work has pool cars but those come with their own down sides - you can’t go straight home after your last client of the day, you’re going to be driving a different car every day and every time you get into the car you’re going to have to readjust it. People trash pool cars and in our organisation, they’re in the garage more than any private or work vehicle. Most people in my organisation choose to take the car payment and the lower mileage rate (less than 45p/mile I would get if I used my car).

Whether mileage is taxable or not can be quite complicated. The HMRC guidance on it runs to dozens of pages and has all sorts of slightly different scenarios and examples of case law illustrating why sometimes it is taxable and sometimes it isn't. It can be a bit of a minefield.

Hi all, thank you for your comments, I think I might had had a bit of bad luck with the car (which is not my employers fault). If the mechanic says that I need a new gearbox I am going to look into leasing an electric car if it’s not too expensive. I don’t want to spend 7k again in a second hand car to last me less than 2 years (since luck is not my thing 😭)

That's probably a good plan and also the problem with cars of that sort of value. Its down to luck whether you've insulated yourself from big bills for a while, but as you have a decent chunk of money in the car, you need to keep running it.

But you can get an electric car from your workplace, they will subsidise the cost by paying the proportion of the lease that's related to work miles, so it should work out reasonable value for your private usage.

The way I see it with cars is that you either buy new or very nearly new, with a warranty, or you go much cheaper and almost regard the car as disposable, in that you hope that it won't let you down, but you get rid of it if/when the engine or gearbox throws up a big bill.

I've currently chosen the latter route and if I get a couple of years with no big bills, I'll be happy and regard anything more as a bonus, with the long term plan that, in 5-10 years time, I'm hoping there's going to be some fabulous scrappage deal where I'll be able to use my knackered old petrol car to get a big discount off a new electric car, that I'll be able to run for at least 10-15 years or more.

The 45p mileage is the most they can give before tax, 56p is pretty good. I had a job where I was doing a lot of driving - 12k mikes a year and found the mileage allowance, 45p, covered my costs easily. I bought a 1 year old car with good mileage. My servicing costs were £200ish every 9 months or so and I would have needed a car anyway so a second car wasn’t a work related expense.

In your shoes I’d think about a more centre based job, the worry about rushing between appointments and having an accident aren’t worth the money.

My work relocated and I did a lot of work on the relocation project.
I did actual costs vs the HMRC mileage cost. The hmrc one bared no relation to the actual costs involved and extra risk. So, the added depreciation of the mileage On the car, the increased servicing and maintenance, the added insurance risk for the car as the more miles the more likely you are to have an accident.
But realistically you can not argue against HMRC rules.

The people I know who do your job lease a separate car for work, small cheap 107/aygo/c1 type. Then end up having the inevitable parking scrapes (due to shitty unpredictable parking spaces) sorted just before returning it.