Reduce my pay because of working from home?

[Psm92]

Long story short, a few months ago I was diagnosed with a disability that causes a lot of fatigue, pain, etc. As such I have been wfh for the past few months. Other colleagues work from home 3 days a week, and attend the office twice a week. As my wfh is due to a health condition/disability, I would have thought this is a reasonable adjustment to enable me to let me do my job. I live in London.

My workplace is now saying they will have to reduce my salary because as my "principal workplace" is now the office, I do not qualify for the London weighting. Feeling really upset by this. Any advice?

NHS here also and I need to go into the office twice a week to continue to qualify for London weighting. It is a significant percentage of my salary - around 11% so well worth me doing this.

I thought so. And I know from visiting, that food and petrol and energy costs are the same so other than housing costs, what would London weighting be for?

I think people historically (and my partner does this) travel from further out to come into London to work. My partner pays more than our mortgage to travel in each month, a car is cheaper but then he has to maintain a car to enable him to get in

It’s really not about commuting costs as such, it’s if you need to be in the office on London then you need to live in a commutable distance. This costs more.

if you no longer need to be in the office then you no longer need to be in commutable distance, so are no longer eligible. You can live further out. Where you live is irrelevant to tnem as you’re one hundred percent from home. They won’t dictate that home is in london

good luck op but I don’t think you can keep this allowance, I am sorry. If you no longer need to live close to the office to be able to attend regularly you are not eligible to be paid extra as if you are, the fact you personally need to or wish to live in London is not relevant in terms of this weighting.

Because it costs more to live in London full stop. And to be commutable a couple of days a week most folks will live in London.

That's what I'm trying to understand. I know food and eating out isn't more expensive. I know when I visit, supermarket prices are the same in London as they are at home in the NW. Is it house insurance, council tax?

People on here are saying it's because the op won't be commuting but surely commuting is just as expensive as in other parts of the country - and probably more regular and reliable!

Food and eating out is more expensive. Travel is only cheap because of TFL and the size of London which is covered by TFL

The minute you step outside of that zone 6 or any of the extensions that cover tubes the cost of travel is extortionate.

Housing and rent is more expensive.

How can you not know housing is more expensive in London?

OP, you have asked for a reasonable adjustment to allow you to WFH all the time (when the norm for your colleagues is 2 or 3 days in the London office per week).

Your employer has effectively said that it cannot be done, that your office location is nominally London with entitlement to the allowance. If you were to be replaced, it would be with a London-based person and not a WFH person. They are entitled to say that they do not consider it a reasonable adjustment to allow you to continue working from home whilst the job keeps its 'London' location.

They have made a counter offer that you can change your contract to have your office location amended to Home. 'Home' comes without any allowance.

You either fight the idea of whether the adjustment you requested is reasonable; or you take their counter-offer. The former is easier to fight if you have union representation. Given that you are civil service, I would have thought that your unions would be aware of similar changes like this over the last two years, and can advise wisely.

I've tried to state this supportively, but ultimately, the OP is choosing to live within commutable distance to London, so she has to pay that put of her own money, not London waiting allowance. You work from home but chose, for whatever the resin (health/support networks/schools or anything else), you pay for that choice.

OP I get you have a disability, so do many other people who aren't lucky enough to have a supportive employer who is prepared to amend their base to allow them to work.... You can't have it all ways. You either need to work in London and so get paid for it, or you work from anywhere and don't.

Having to be in the office 2/5 days a week is a bigger commitment than wfh full time. My fiancé has to commute to London 2-3 days a week at great cost to himself, not ideal but required by his company. He could argue that he can fulfil his role to the same extent from home (where we have had to upscale to a property where he can have a designated office) but for whatever reason his business wants some degree of presenteeism.

There is the option to work from home full time but as this will reduce commuting costs considerably (£40-50 a day for him) he would lose his additional London weighting, and it would be accepted but not encouraged by his City employers.

I have a history of anorexia and am no stranger to the red tape and delays of mental health bureaucracy, it has caused me years and years of pain, but I recognise that from a business point of view there has to be some degree of parity across employees. Just because my fiancé and I moved out of London in the pandemic and thus his commuting costs tripled, that's on him. It's his (our) responsibility. It's just one of those things. A hit we took to buy somewhere larger than we could afford in central London.

Disability or not (and I get it, how unfair it seems) your colleagues are travelling in twice a week at greater cost and so deserve the add on. You have the option to work from home, when without your disability you wouldn't. Can't you see that as glass half full?!

Food and eating out is more expensive.

Sorry, but it's not. We usually eat out when we stay in London and the prices are the same.
And we go shopping into supermarkets and the prices are the same. Or maybe the NW is just very expensive.

How can you not know housing is more expensive in London?

I'd already acknowledged that housing is more expensive..
"so other than housing costs, what would London weighting be for?"

...but I was responding to someone who said that life in general was more expensive. I wondered what those other things were, that's all.

OP no good will come from
arguing with folk here.

the civil service is a big beast. You should be aware of how to navigate it.

as others have advised you, ask to the policy which informed this decision. You will clearly see wether there is a blanket policy to removed the London weighting from anyone who now works from home. You now work from home - so arguing you are exempt from this policy because if your disability could be difficult. The counter argument could be that the reason for home working is irrelevant. If this is a settled policy the civil service will have considered whether it will withstand legal challenge.

I appreciate you feel strongly about this but I think you are allowing emotion to get in the way of reason.

join the union- you won’t be the only person impacted by this policy and they will be able to advise you in it.

bit intuitively you must see that if the allowance have been removed from everyone working from home, and you are now working from home, that it is reasonable you also lose the allowance?

@Psm92, do contact ACAS, but also have a read of the Equality Act. It outlines that people with a disability should be offered 'reasonable adjustments' which I believe covers your need to work from home.
Your employers need to be very careful - trying to reduce your salary could well be construed as discrimination.

Another CS here. ^^ this is good advice.

I would add look into whether your Dept has a disability network or join one of the cross-Whitehall networks, especially if you aren't in a union. There may be others in a similar situation - i don't believe a cross-Whitehall position has been reached yet on London Weightings (unless we just haven't heard about it yet) so it may be worth exploring if all Depts are pursuing the same position.

Equally, worth trying to find out what the position would have been pre-covid. Perhaps again if you have any longstanding fully wfh colleagues? If pre-covid, wfh due to your disability would have retained your LW, then there might be a case that it shouldn't be conflated with the more general wfh / remote working policies that have been introduced since covid?

You can't have it all ways. You either need to work in London and so get paid for it, or you work from anywhere and don't.

The disability changes everything.

They allowed the accommodation and are now going to penalise her financially for it. This amounts to giving her a choice of battling her disability to do the required three days or accepting less money for the same work load.

My good friend has a job (not public sector, admittedly) that involved driving to see clients. Because of this, she was paid a car allowance, in lieu of a company car.

She started having seizures, and had to surrender her licence to the DVLA. The company she worked for made a reasonable adjustment, in that she was no longer required to visit clients as part of her duties. But because of this, her company car allowance was removed.

She did speak to her union, who told her this was above board, as she wasn’t suffering a reduction in salary because of her disability, but rather, because her duties have changed. She was no longer entitled to the allowance as a result, as it was to compensate for a specific need/requirement which no longer existed. She wasn’t being penalised for her disability (which obviously would have been illegal), she was just not being compensated for an additional expense which she was no longer being required to make.

She did manage to negotiate a 3 month extension of the allowance, whist she settled her outstanding car finance and sold the car.

I know that the rules/law for public/private sector can be different in some circumstances, and I’m no employment lawyer, HR or union representative, but this looks like a similar scenario to me.

We live within a commutable distance of London and have to for work. A day underground ticket might be cheap for the visitor, but it isn’t cheap travelling to London from the suburbs. We are a 40 minutes overhead train ride into Liverpool Street and it costs DH over £6000 in ticket and station parking per year, plus we have the additional housing cost because we need to live here in order to be able to travel in.

OP is no longer required to live within a commutable distance of London, she is honestly being a bit cheeky expecting to be able to work at home and still claim London living allowance (perhaps if it were called a London commuting allowance it would make more sense, because that is what it is).

I’m sorry I think you’ve misunderstood. Her base salary for doing the work remains the same, all that’s been removed is the London weighting which is an allowance for people who need to regularly attend the London office and as such need to live close, the op no longer needs to do this so is no longer eligible for the additional allowance, but her base salary to do thr work remains the exact same.

Join a union - lots of people do that when they have an issue, they’ll still help you. Talk to them before you talk to HR

It might be within guidelines but it seems unreasonable as you live in London and have most of the costs associated with that. Perhaps a % reduction would be reasonable as you don’t commute.

What you may be able to secure is a gradual reduction in the allowance if WFH is now permanent.

I do think some people here are not considering that someone doing exactly the same job but in an office in say Leeds would not be paid the weighting.

OP now lives is London for personal rather than work reasons.

but the union will be best placed to advice and there will be a lot of noise around London weightings at the moment and they will have in-house legal counsel.

@Psm92 I don't think you understand how the London Weighting Works. It is not one weighting applied to the entirety of Greater London. Certain boroughs get a different weighting - there are different grades to it. It's not a blanket payment for the whole of London.

You need to work out which payment is appropriate for where you live and go back to them. You also need to ensure there is a way to cover the costs you are going to take on from working from home - electricity etc.

@ZingotheDingo i think it may be different in different departments as that isn't the case in our Dept. For us, there is one "national" payscale and one "london" payscale which is for london + home counties (i think). It doesn't matter which borough you are in.

Hmm maybe. We have inner and outer and fringe…