Barry Sheerman – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Barry Sheerman on 2016-04-15.
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, whether his Department has a policy on the payment of homecare workers for travel time.
Nick Boles
The Government is clear that anyone who is entitled to the National Minimum Wage (NMW) and National Living Wage (NLW) should receive the NMW/NLW. The same rules apply on the payment of travel time for homecare workers as all other sectors in the economy.
Time spent travelling directly between assignments generally counts as time worked for NMW/NLW purposes. Whether a worker is entitled to the NMW/NLW for other periods – such as the time spent travelling between home and their first assignment and between their last assignment and home – depends on the terms of their contract and whether they are working during that time. Where the travelling time is time for which the NMW/NLW should be paid, any associated expenditure incurred by a worker in respect of that travel must be reimbursed.
In September 2015 the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled in the case Federación de Servicios that journeys made by workers without a fixed or habitual place of work between their homes and the first and last customer of the day constitute working time. However, this ruling does not require the travel time to be paid, and it is for Member States to determine whether this time should be paid. The National Minimum Wage Regulations 2015 state that travel time to and from the home to a place of work or a place where an assignment is carried out is not treated as time or salaried hours work.
The rules on travel time are set out in full on page 31 of the ‘Calculating the minimum wage’ document:
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