£30 - surely no longer enough for work expenses and Xmas party!

[Thursday5pmisginoclock]

For those in corporate roles where you can claim expenses…what are you company policy amounts for an evening meal when working away? Our £30 allowance feels so mean, and it’s the same amount for Christmas party! I mean what do you get for that nowadays??? Especially if we were to meet in London?

also why is the personal car payment still £0.45ppm - I am pretty sure it was that 10 maybe even 15/20 years ago!

inflation has not caught up surely…?

Is this commonplace?

I work in the City and often have to work late so expense my dinner - very rarely comes up more than £20.

£30 is more than adequate and you sound greedy tbh.

Most Christmas menus at non fancy, standard bar type places in the city of London are £40-£45 for 3 courses not including drinks. I’ve looked around and even £35 will be a struggle, everything has gone up
£5-£10 a head since last year.

https://www.drakeandmorgan.co.uk/the-folly/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/DM-Christmas2023-Menus-SetMenu-v5-Digi.pdf

However for standard work expense evening meal £30 is more than enough - wouldn’t expect to be having 3 courses on work. Dinner, desert if fancy it and soft drink if working.

yaNbu cos Christmas meals are expensive this year!

I used to have £35 per day for breakfast, lunch and dinner in London, and whilst that sounds like a lot of money it is not actually that much when you take into account that you can't store or prepare food in a hotel room. Sometimes I got lucky and stayed in a hotel with breakfast included.

I much rather stayed at home where I could make a whole pot of coffee for pennies!

Your company is being generous. My company uses the government published subsistence scale rates. The evening meal allowance is £15

The hmrc limit is £150 per person
where is the £30 coming from? https://www.gov.uk/expenses-benefits-social-functions-parties/whats-exempt

We don't get a penny. You are lucky.

I work for the NHS in the community.

£30 is more than reasonable for an evening meal, if your staying somewhere like a premier inn you can get three courses for £25.
It’s also plenty for a Xmas party, just be grateful you get something towards it. Many don’t.

You’re very lucky to get anything paid towards it, I’ve worked in the NHS (non clinical role) for over 20 years & never had anything paid towards a Christmas meal!

Our company pays just £20. Even when working in London.

I’m guessing there are a lot of industries which account creatively when it comes to the Christmas party! The free bar at our Christmas party must be a sizeable chunk of that £150 alone!

I can never understand why people expect to have a big Christmas bash at company expense.
Not everyone celebrates Christmas, does this mean that they should be paying out for all religious festival celebrations?

So pizza express
order and have your pizza - single course in less than 30 mins
then they quite rightly want the table back
sounds like great fun

£30 will easily cover a main meal and drink. If you've got a good appetite, I'd be thinking curry as you can get a curry, naan and rice for £20 easily. Still leaves money for an alcoholic drink.

If you're thinking of an xmas meal, is it possible to do something at the main office of your corporation. Not in the same line of work, but where I work (well known employer) our xmas entertainment allowance is £10 - this runs to a buffet (which no one says no to as it's free!) and a raffle. We accept no alcoholic drinks, but can easily plan something else after.

Do you know that you can claim the difference between your company's rates and the HMRC rates against tax, so you at least get the tax back on the difference.

Sounds fine to me. We get absolutely nothing towards the Christmas meal. We have to pay ourselves.

£15 per night subs and our mileage only went up to 45ppm this year. Up till then it was 33ppm.

on the plus side we can pool the subs together and cook joint meals if staying in self catering accommodation.

we do not get a subsidy for xmas party meals. theres beers and nibbles in the office one friday before xmas.

Private sector, I think your very lucky to get anything, i travel 58 miles round trip to work and back and get no petrol allowance, we also arrange and pay for our own Christmas party's.
We do get free tea bags, coffee, milk, sugar, juice, we also get cheaper meals from our on site restaurant, but no time to eat it, 30 mins lunch only most work through it.

The idea is that you’re fed and the cost of the meal is covered. It’s not the company’s responsibility to provide fun! What would you normally do of an evening if you weren’t away?

Don't know that we have anything for evening meals (it's never been necessary), but lunch is £6...

you are very lucky.. my employer does not pay for our christmas meal, and our christmas gift usually comprises of a box of tea bags, a jar of coffee and a bag of sugar... count your blessings all £30 of them

I just googled a few chain restaurants. £30 would easily get you a three course set menu and a glass of wine in Cote or Cafe Rouge. It would get you a large pizza and a salad in Pizza Express. It's enough for a big Nando's and a soft drink. (and they are all London prices). Small independent places outside London will probably be even better value. It seems fair enough to me. It's meant to be covering reasonable out of pocket expenses not enabling you to have a fine dining experience.

Ours has gone up from £10 to £12 😝it was £5 per person for about 20 years!
we usually go somewhere relatively cheap and then just pay the extra ourselves

Right - I have checked that location’s menu, the only pizza that costs £18 is the half and half one. The average cost there is £15.45. Here’s the menu:

https://mobile-pay.pizzaexpress.com/london-leadenhall-market/restaurant-menu/main-menu

As you can see from the menu, they actually do Legera range with pizza & salad combined.

The other pizzas will be around 1000 calories. Is that not a reasonable enough meal? Does work have to fund what you’d “like” to eat ie extras vs what will keep you full?

My company policy is tiered and tops out a £25 for a full 24 hour period, £30 for central London. So that's lunch and dinner (and breakfast if it's not included in hotel), no change for Christmas 'party' and I've just been sent the menu for the restaurant ours is at and it's £45 each 😵

Fuel allowance has been the same for years, it was alright 10 years ago but usually end up out of pocket now.

I get 45ppm too and only 20pp towards xmas do