When is travel time work time?

Gilly

Gilly

Gilly

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Scenario:

  • Person A is officially based in office X - their permanent place of work
  • Person A is given a temporary assignment working in office Y - a customer site
  • Office Y is 200 miles from home
  • Time of travel from home to office X is deducted from time spent traveling to office Y
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Is the time that is left, in this scenario, classed as working time?

I'm being told that it is not working time, and therefore does not accrue towards the working week for the 48 hours maximum working week for the working time directive that I would otherwise be falling foul of. I'm not entirely sure that is true but wanted to be sure before pushing on it.

In essence, if I'm not working at my base location I understood everything past the time I spend traveling to my base location to be working time. My HR dept. is telling me different.

Thanks :)
 
Yeah. For me it's currently averaging out at 12-15 hours per week. It's a lot of time to just write off when the job itself isn't particularly appealing and I'm losing money due to my OOH payments having ceased...
 
See, this is where it starts getting a bit murky. Is it classed as a commute still if it isn't to my normal place of work? I thought not, but I don't know (hence this thread :))

From some random law site:

Working hours include any time when the worker is at the employer’s disposal and is expected to carry out activities for the employer.


Travel time to and from work is not usually counted as working hours. However, travel as part of the employee’s duties is. Travel to and from clients at the start and finish of a day is now classed as working time where mobile workers have no fixed place of work (for example, care workers and installers of services in client’s homes).

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I do have a fixed place of work, but I'm being sent elsewhere by my employer. This means that during travel to somewhere that isn't my normal place of work means that I am, by definition, carrying out activities for my employer?
 
I would be telling my management that they will need to deal with the fact that I won't be working 37 hours plus travel time, and will be deducting the travel from the time that I am available to them, resulting in an actual working week of 37-n (based on the previous week or an average time taken, I'm not sure yet).

I feel like I'm being walked all over, and I don't like that. I don't want to be here doing the work I'm doing because I'm not doing the job I was recruited for and therefore not developing in the way that I had planned, and the fact that it's a 400mile round trip is an additional load I do not wish to bear to do a job I'm not inclined to do :)
 
I do not commute, I stay over (away from my family :(). This is funded by work, as is my fuel, lending credence IMO to the fact that this is not my usual place of work!

I wish I could average 60 mph all the way! It took me nearly 10 hours to arrive last week.

You're right, I wouldn't be doing anything other than traveling if I was commuting every day, that's why I wouldn't class it as a commute.
 
I'm pushing for re-assignment to be honest :D

I'm not arsed about the amount of time I work, so long as I'm not away too much. I'm not ending up with a broken home and missing out on my kids' formative years for an assignment I don't want and didn't choose :)
 
adolf hamster said:
Surely if its a temporary assignment then it should classify as work time as your commute time is only what you'd normally to to get to your ordinary office.

I'd be charging them time and fuel minus whatever my ordinary commute would be.

Guess i'm lucky our other sites are all pretty much the same commute distance/time
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Yeah, that aligns with my thinking.

I have a fuel card and company car (as part of my remuneration package, not business needs) so that's taken care of already, but working over 50 hours a week every week and only putting 37 through the books is really starting to grate.
 
Well, it's not the start of the week because I flatly refused to spend the whole week away, so I'm traveling Tuesday morning and coming back Thursday night (though I'm still under pressure to spend more time away than that). I'm setting off between 5-6am to arrive onsite before lunch on the Tuesday and leaving after 4 on the Thursday, getting home around 9pm. Working all night Tuesday and Wednesday trying to claw the time back that I've spent traveling.

Remuneration was agreed before I found out where my first assignment was :)

I don't expect any sort of recompense for the travel time, I just don't want it to continue.

The role I do is supposed to be service architecture but I'm actually doing service transition more than anything else. A lot of the design work is done before we get our statement of work. I spoke to ACAS, they didn't even think I should be deducting the time I spend commuting to my contractual base location, they think that when I'm going to the site I've been sent to by work directly from home, that I should be classed as working the moment I leave the house. It has no precedent in UK law though, so it's difficult to enforce.
 
The only issue I've had in terms of health and safety has been tiredness whilst driving. I'm working late on the Tues/Weds evenings to try to make the time back, then early into the office, work most or all of the day then drive 200+ miles. I'm completely drained by the time I get back home.

I'm driving the distances, not using the train, because otherwise I feel trapped in the hotel, and have to get taxis to and from the office which would be frowned upon anyway (fuel card is centrally funded, taxis would be funded by the account).

Basically my days are:

Monday: WFH, or on occasion central London or Manchester
Tuesday: up early, drive 204 miles, work until COP then go to the hotel and work another 6 hours
Weds: up early, into the office, work until COP then go to the hotel and work another 6 hours
Thurs: up early, into the office, work as workload dictates (sometimes I'm lucky and can get away mid afternoon but sometimes it's 5-6pm) and then drive back. Depending on the flow of traffic this is often a 6-7 hour journey
Fri: WFH or local office

It means my wife, who works full time, is put under huge strain because I'm away so much and even when I'm here I'm completely drained. This is not what I signed up for. I'm having the right conversations in the right places but things are not moving as quickly as I would like so I'm looking at other roles already, internal and external.
 
Yeah, my formal place of work is in Yorkshire. The assignment I've been put on (by someone who was apparently sympathetic to someone with a young family at home) is in Middlesex.

I hate feeling that I've been taken advantage of.
 
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