Hi Natalie,

Small world - I am also based in Hampshire, though none of our employees live on the Island. (I used to have a colleague who commuted daily from Newport to Eastleigh!)

I don't think it is typical for employers covering Hampshire and the IoW to have a separate policy for IoW based employees. Certainly Hampshire County Council (the biggest local employer) don't, though you could contact some of the other ones who have offices/work locations across the two like the ones below to see if they do?:
https://www.hiwwt.org.uk/
https://www.hantsfire.gov.uk/


Thinking about it the other way, if your other employees are going to be travelling further for work, wouldn't you be giving her an unfair advantage in terms of the remuneration if she was reimbursed from zero miles and them only from 20+ miles?

I am not a tax expert though so there may well be something I am missing...

Gemma

In reply to Gemma:

HMRC rules normally prohibit employers from reimbursing travel expenses from employee's home to their normal place of work, but allow reimbursement for all expenses for travelling on employer's business from their normal place of work. If an employee's normal place of work is their home, then travelling expenses can legitimately be reimbursed for *all* travel on employer's business from employee's home location, but HMRC normally require some convincing / proof that it really is.
In my experience, it's not at all usual to apply any qualifying business mileage threshold below which business mileage won't be reimbursed: indeed, why should employees pay for business mileage below this threshold out of their own pockets?
So, more details needed as to why this particular employer feels the need to apply these thresholds at all, given that travel from home to place of work shouldn't normally be the employer's concern.

In reply to David:

No I was a bit puzzled by this. It's only because I live locally I thought I could give some context about this not being typical...