The European Court of Justice has reached a decision that travel time at the start and end of each working day for workers with no fixed place of work, often referred to as Mobile Workers, will now count as working time for the purpose of compliance with the Working Time Regulations.
This means that employers with staff who travel directly between home and various client sites (for example field engineers or domiciliary care workers) will now need to count that travel time to the first client of the day and home from the last client of the day as working time.
This has implications for calculating average weekly working hours, maximum working hours working time opt outs, daily working hours and rest breaks.
In most cases it will have no impact on pay as this ruling doesn’t apply to the National Minimum Wage which specifically excludes travel time to and from home.
But it may in some cases have an impact on contractual pay arrangements or trigger overtime payments so it would be advisable to review your employment contracts and relevant policies on this matter.
Contact us if you’d like to review how this ruling affects your business.