When does travel count as working time?
It is the question that produces the most arguments per hour of anything in this field, and most of the confusion comes from mixing up two separate questions: is it working time, and is it paid?
Three situations, three answers
The ordinary commute
Travel between home and a fixed workplace is not working time. This is the settled starting point and the reason the other two cases feel surprising.
Workers with no fixed workplace
In C-266/14 (Federación de Servicios Privados v Tyco), the Court of Justice held that where workers have no fixed or habitual place of work, the time spent travelling between home and the first and last customer of the day is working time under Directive 2003/88. Engineers, care workers and mobile technicians are the obvious cases.
Travel to another site
Where the employer sends someone somewhere other than their usual workplace, the journey is generally treated as part of the working day rather than a commute. This is the one most often disputed after the fact — and the one nobody writes down at the time.
Working time is not the same as paid time
This is the distinction that causes most of the trouble. Time can count as working time for the rest-period and 48-hour rules and still not attract pay beyond what the contract says, subject always to the minimum wage floor. Deciding one does not decide the other. Write down which you mean in your policy, because your team certainly will not assume the same one you do.
Recording it without an argument
- Travel recorded as its own kind of time, visible in the record rather than folded into ordinary hours.
- Started on a phone when the journey starts, rather than reconstructed on Friday from a diary.
- With the projects module, booked to the job, so travel appears in what the job really cost.
- Counted into the rest-period and 48-hour checks where your policy says it should be.
Questions we get
Is travel to work working time?
The ordinary commute to a fixed workplace is not. For workers with no fixed workplace, the Court of Justice held in C-266/14 (Tyco) that travel between home and the first and last customer of the day is working time under Directive 2003/88. Which of those describes your team is the whole question.
Does that mean we have to pay for it?
Not automatically — working time for the purposes of the rest and 48-hour rules and pay are two different questions in UK law. Pay follows the contract, with the minimum wage rules as a floor. Do not assume the two answers are the same.
What about travel to a different site for the day?
Travel that the employer requires, to somewhere other than the usual workplace, is where this most often bites. It is also the case most often argued about afterwards, which is a good reason to record the start of the journey rather than reconstruct it.
How do you record it?
As its own kind of time, so it appears in the record without being mixed in with hours at the bench. With the projects module, a journey can be booked to the job it belongs to.
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