Travel costs

Agreement should be reached in advance on what travel costs will be reimbursed. The employee may have to travel to see customers, so this cost should be covered in the same way as if the employee were travelling from the workplace. Usually, the employee will be responsible for covering their own costs for travelling into the office, but sometimes, if they are a full-time homeworker, travel to the office will be reimbursed.

At one council, for the purposes of travelling expenses, the council regards the premises where the homeworker’s manager is based as the employee’s “normal office base”. Therefore, the normal council policy will apply, which is that mileage will not be payable when the homeworker attends the “normal office base”. However, with this sort of contract it would be normal for employees to be reimbursed for attending meetings, training courses away from their office base.

Where considerable cost is likely to be involved, there may be agreement on a specific number of home to office journeys where no business mileage will be paid. For example, it could be agreed that six visits per month will not attract mileage payment and, should there be a requirement for additional office visits, these would attract business mileage at the appropriate rate.

If the employer offers workers an extra payment for coming into the office this would have to be on top of the National Minimum Wage (NMW) for low-paid workers.