Excess travel expenses

If Essex County Council needs you to change your work base you may be eligible for excess travel expenses if:

• your work base is changed by operational reasons beyond their control, for example, reorganisation or a building closure
• you have been redeployed because of ill-health, disability or redundancy
• the new work base adds an additional 5 miles or more each way onto your usual commute from home

You can only claim the difference between your previous home to work mileage and your new home to work mileage. For example, the commute from your home to your previous work base was 10 miles. The commute from your home to your new work base is 18 miles. You can only claim for 8 miles of the journey.

Excess travel expenses are only paid for up to 18 months. After 18 months the new work base is recognised as your permanent work base so no mileage can be claimed. The rate is 25p per mile for private car users. For employees with lease cars their usual lease car rate will apply.

Excess travel expenses will not be paid:

• if your additional travel is less than 5 miles each way
• if your commute does not incur travel costs, for example walking or car share
• for additional time spent travelling

All reimbursements of expenses are subject to tax and National Insurance.

The excess travelling expenses policy (PDF, 62KB) explains our approach to reimbursing employees for additional travel expenses if you're asked to change your work base. The service which originated the change of work base is responsible for the payment of the travelling allowances to the employee.

How to claim

1. Complete the excess travelling expenses authorisation form (DOCX, 42KB)
2. Send this to your line manager
3. Your line manager should obtain the approval of your Head of Service. If you’ve changed service, your new line manager should forward the form to the Head of Service that started the move
4. Once authorised, your line manager should either submit the form via the Online Portal, email the form to the Payroll Processing. This will be retained on your personal file (or held locally on your personal file, if applicable)
5. The manager will also need to submit an Oracle AA2 form to Payroll Services to set up the calculated payment for the 18-month period.

Calculation of payments

Excess travel expenses are paid monthly. You only need to submit the authorisation form once with the total excess mileage for the term of the location change, up to 18 months.

The formula for payment for a full time employee is as follows:

• 25p per mile for all additional miles above 10 per day (5 miles each way)
• calculated at the outset using 228 working days per year for 4 years
• paid monthly over a period of 18 months.

For part-time employees, the number of working days per year is calculated pro rata.

When the work base is changed but an employee is only required to travel to that base for part of the working week, the number of working days per year is calculated pro rata. For the other days business mileage can be claimed for any distance travelled in excess of the old base to home mileage.

Where an employee leaves the employment of the council before a payment is due, they forfeit that month’s payment.

A change of workplace involves a full-time employee travelling a further 8 miles each way (equals an additional 16 mile round trip).

If you travel by public transport

Where excess travel costs apply, compensation is paid at the vehicle mileage rate (either 25p per mile or lease car rate), regardless of the mode of transport. 

If you are travelling to your new workplace wholly or partly by public transport, you will still claim the additional miles as vehicle mileage rates rather than the cost of any fares.