Travelling time

The Court of Appeal (CA) has upheld the decision of the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) that time spent by poultry workers travelling to and from farms across the country was not “time work” for the purposes of the National Minimum Wage (NMW).

The case of Revenue and Customs Commissioners v Taylors Services Ltd (dissolved) [2025] EWCA Civ 956 was previously reported in Labour Research (September 2024, page 20).

In this case, poultry workers were collected from their homes by minibus and transported to various locations around the country to work. These journeys added many hours to the workers’ day but were unpaid. The question was whether this was a breach of the NMW rules.

The CA has now agreed with the EAT that, according to the rules, this could not amount to “time work” for which the workers should be paid. It was for the Low Pay Commission or Secretary of State, not the courts, to consider whether this was an anomaly to be corrected.