Safe Speed Forums

as an office worker, if you are sent to a different office for a day, should the company reimburse you for the expense as it is not your normal place of duty?

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Richie

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As an employer, I would say this is entirely reasonable but, legally, it would depend on the wording of your Contracts of Employment. You only need to reimburse additional costs incurred by the employee by reason of being in a different office.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

I'd agree with Malcolm - normally someone has a base office and travel to other sites should be paid for. (It's what we do anyway)

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As an office worker if you use your own car for that you're not insured under a normal insurance policy, so you should use a company car or hire vehicle, thus the expenses are now down to the company.

Other than that caveat, I don't think there's any specific rules, most places have generally worked on the "dont take the piss" rule. If the trip is futher than your normal commute then they pay you for the extra miles and if you have to leave earlier, they pay you overtime for that extra time. So if instead of leaving home at 8:30 I leave at 8 then that's half an hours overtime even though I'm 9-5. If the trip is shorter then there is no extra pay for it.

I thought that was a resonable situation, until I learned of the potential insurance liability.

If you are going to use your car for business purposes (which means any journey apart from routine commuting to your regular place of work) then you need to ensure you have Class 1 Business Use on your policy. If you have a decent claims record it rarely costs much if anything extra.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Also seems to depend on company as to whether they chuck it in anyway (online at least).

About 5 years ago, we needed to insure Mrs Theboy for business use (her car, not her ), and had some crazy quotes (morethan wanted an extra £500!), then Direct Line's small print showed that business use 'was included', which made that choice a no-brainer.

To get around the the issue of business use without having to provide company/pool cars the organisation has taken out some kind of block policy that covers staff to use their own cars for work.

Or at least that is what we have been told!

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i this case a car is n/a. it will be a train journey

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Richie

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Strictly speaking, the expenses must only cover any additional travelling costs over the costs of travelling to the normal place of work. thus, if the other office is 50 miles from home and the normal office is 15 miles from home, the expenses cannot be for more than 35 miles each way. However, if you are required to attend at your normal office before going on to the remote office, then full mileage can be paid at the appropriate IR mileage rates.
On the subject of insurance, most policies cover the insured for 'Social, domestic and pleasure plus use by the insured in connection with his/her business but excluding commercial travelling' (I just checked my insurance and that's what it says).

As my firm pay less than the inland revenue rate. I get a tax rebate on all mileage.

so if the inland revenue rate was 40p per mile and my firm onlly paid 10p
I traveled 400 bussiness miles that tax man would refund me my income tax on 400X 0.3=£120. taxed at 20%= £24 tax refund

If you were unpaid for travel then you should still be due the refund of tax.

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I disagree on the part about it not costing anything extra.

My GF brought up this issue with her previous job. She'd occasionally (say a couple of times a month) have to go to a datacentre in London and had to take her own car since the tube shuts down around midnight, and was a bit pissed off at paying an increased insurance premium for this.

Eventually they came to an agreement whereby she'd use dayinsure.com to get the extra cover required and just add that to her expenses for the trip.

Not sure how that flys from a tax point of view. Same with Toltec's situation, could that block policy be considered a taxable benefit?

I didn't say it never cost much extra and for a young driver without a healthy NCB it might cost quite a bit extra. The cost, however, is notionally covered by the mileage payments you receive.

I once worked for a company that did have a block insurance policy for employees using their own cars on business but this was eventually withdrawn as it was being abused - pretty much any claim just happened to have occurred on a business journey.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

And of course does the company policy cover the worker out of hours - then definitely you travel in firms time.
Edit - and in the case where you opt to travel from home in the firms vehicle, how often before the tax man gets interested ??

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When I worked at Marconi they were very careful about this sort of thing.

You either had to drive onto site and pick up a pool car, or they would have a hire company drop a car at your house the night before (which you wern't insured to drive until on company business the following morning, so if the muppets block your drive then tough luck) you make your trip and the hire car company pick it up again.

Everyone hated this system, because there was no overtime for traveling and you often ended up with an unmovable car taking up space on your street for a few weeks afterwards causing aggro with the neighbours. One guy reported his as abandoned after a week. It had a big red sticker on it when the car hire company finally arrived to collect it.