Meal allowance when working away

[Workingfornothing]

Can anyone please advise. I’ve looked but can’t make much sense. Is there a legal requirement for a company to provide you with meal expenses when working away? Currently my partner sometimes works away and sometimes works local. When he’s local he has breakfast at home, takes a packed lunch, and a hot drink in a flask and water/juice, then obviously has evening meal at home. When he works away his employer pays for his hotel, and £20 for an evening meal. That’s it. If the evening meal is under £20 he gets that amount back only. If it’s over £20 he only gets £20. Every time he works away he’s using his own money as he has to buy his meals and drinks (excluding £20) So it’s costing him, and other employees, to do their job. I just can’t see how this is fair. So, is there any legislation to say meals must be provided by the employer?

He’s PAYE. I think they’re unreasonable (many here don’t 🤔) but it seems there’s no legislation to say they must provide anything 🤷‍♀️

He should have a set amount to cover the day for him to decide - I think that's fair. The amount could be more generous. He is clearly working at a stingy company!

But ultimately, he isn't required to stay there. Like any job, if the terms don't suit - look elsewhere

I’m pretty sure that the bit most of us think you’re being daft on is the leap that says because can’t claim more than the evening meal, it’s got to be super expensive for breakfast and lunch.

Yes, in an ideal world it would be easy and zero cost to eat and drink while away from
home with work. But the legislation doesn’t require that. It is however perfectly possible to exist without spending half a days wages on the incremental costs.

To those who seem to think it’s easy or acceptable to take a fridge, crockery, cutlery etc with you, I can only laugh and assume you’ve never worked away from home.

I think people have suggested insulated bags or a small coolbox rather than travelling with a fridge. And yes, many of us have worked away from home.

I'd add that working away frequently can be pretty rubbish no matter what the expenses policy is. Even with a generous meal allowance there is a point when having to sit and eat yet another restaurant/hotel meal becomes tedious and sometimes you just want to eat an M&S salad in your room and watch tv in your pyjamas. So I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest taking some cutlery and/or snacks from home to try to break it up a bit.

Nope.

I didn’t say it was super expensive for breakfast and lunch. My post was about if there was a legal requirement for employers to provide x amount per meal/day etc. Our feelings are, he shouldn’t be spending more just because he’s working away, work should be covering any costs incurred. Many companies do, some quite generously too.

People have suggested taking a fridge, and cutlery etc. When you’re travelling with colleagues, in a van full of tools and equipment, plus holdalls full of a weeks worth of clothes, toiletries and then bags of food each, there’s not exactly much space left for half a kitchen 🤷‍♀️

Read the ‘quote history’.

but the point is he has to pay for breakfast and lunch at home. his huge packed lunch that you make him isn’t free. presumably you save on the cost of feeding him whilst he is away given he eats so much and it balances out

a mini fridge and some plastic bowls knives and forks is hardly a mini kitchen. you can get really compact reusable sets now

I agree that the allowance is mean and the rule that the £20 cannot be split over 2 meals is unfair - at the very least they could ask their employer to change that as it will make it a lot easier for them and not cost the company more.

It's really unfair that employers get to disrupt their employees lives like this and then penny pinch over properly compensating them for subsistence. It's also not right that they have to put up with worse food or make significant efforts to keep costs down.

If employers are sending their employees away, they should pay for them to eat what they like within reason, not expect them to be making packed lunches in hotel rooms or live on rubbish.

If you're used to eating a decent cooked dinner and taking leftovers for lunch, it's really demoralising to have to exist on porridge pots, pastries, supermarket sandwiches and instant noodles to avoid spending a fortune on decent food. Surely no-one on MN thinks this is an acceptable diet?

Sandwiches for lunch and Spoons for dinner. I used to do this.