Principal place of work

[Sprinkl3]

What does 'principal place of work' mean?

My boss wants to move me to a different site permanently. My contract states -

Your principal place of work will be [current location] but you may be required to work at other sites within [organisation].

This makes sense because we often go to different sites for training.

Surely principal place of work means I have to spend at least 50% of my time there? I have some flexibility but can't travel the extra route 100% of the time. Do you think I have a case that they have to keep me at the current site 50% of the time?

TIA

so you don’t ever WFH or from another location in addition to the above two mentioned?

(This s not my specialist area)

Principal place of work can be complicated. Eg for consultants who generally work out of the office and in fact are very rarely in the office they will have a designated principal place of work.

Do you wfh? Does your job involve a lot of site visits or working in client sites?

Never worked from home. All my hours are at this one location and once every two months I'll attend a twilight training session at a different location.

full or part time?

When I started I was full time. Now two days a week

oh come on

So the new place would be once a week?

ah apologies

so you would like one day at one place and one day at another? sounds a bit bitty?

If they want to move you/your job to another location which isn’t workable for you personally you could be in line for redundancy - could be a good thing or a bad thing. Don’t let them change your principal place of work without getting the number of days you have to be there in writing.

Not what I want at all. I want to stay where I currently am. I can't make the new location work around childcare. But I can JUST do it one day a week.

My principal place of work is office x, but in practice I visit once a week and the rest is travel/WFH. What it means in practice for me is i'm not legally home based (IE they can withdraw WFH at any point) and I can't claim expenses for travelling into office x.

I also need my car insurance to cover me for commuting when I travel to office x, but I need to be covered for "driving for business" to use my personal car to travel to any other office.

what’s the difference in mileage?

My principal place of work is HQ site and home (hybrid contract) - if I go to any other site besides HQ or home, I can claim travel expenses.

I think you need to ask what the consequences of you changing principal place of work would be, what the expectations are. Do you know why they're doing it? Is there a site closure or something? Why do they want you to move site?

I could do HQ every day, but it's an hour away in good traffic (train or car,) longer if anything goes wrong, and it would have an impact on my quality of life to do it daily. I could do it (and plenty of people have at least that long a commute every day,) but I'd probably look for a new job somewhere closer. However, once or twice a week is a nice variety and good to see people face-to-face. And in my role, I could work pretty much anywhere i have a network connection; that's not the case for all roles. (Also I am not expecting us to change to 100% on-site, as there aren't enough desks for everyone to be in all at the same time.)

Not too much but enough to prevent me from dropping my kids off at childcare

what’s the actual number?!

If let's say your contract says Ipswich and the other place is Bury St Edmunds, that is a change of location. If it says 'in Suffolk' then you are stuffed, so to speak.

Have a conversation as if it is only one day a week which is difficult, there may be a way forward. Whatever is agreed if acceptable to you, get a new contract which is specific.

Seven

This post makes me happy because the named location is VERY specific! Thank you!