A member of staff had a traffic accident in her own car on her way home from work. She was not at her permanent office, but delivering training at another location. Would this be considered an accident at work as she was not travelling from her normal workplace?

My employers (a local Council) require that anyone using their own car have appropriate business insurance on the vehicle. It would seem that insurers believe this to be an "at work" incident. Does not mean that the HSE use the same criteria though!

Amber HSWA Section 52 defines “at work” – an employee is at work throughout the “course of his employment”. The “course of employment” has been subject to extensive case law dating back to historic Workers Compensation Acts and has been sufficiently widely interpreted as to apply to work-related travel accidents (but not accidents on what is “substantially the same as his ordinary commuting journey”). Current practice is generally to consider HMRC rules when distinguishing between commuting and “at work” business travel”. See extracts from 490 Employee travel A tax and NICs guide for employers below: The basis of tax relief for employee travel and subsistence 1.7 Employees are entitled to relief for the full cost they are obliged to incur travelling in the performance of their duties or travelling to or from a place they have to attend in the performance of their duties – as long as the journey is not ordinary commuting or private travel. Example Austin is an installation engineer who works at the premises of his employer’s various clients throughout the United Kingdom. ……... One week he travels between his home in Dover to a temporary workplace in Gloucester, staying in a hotel for four nights and, then returning to Dover. The cost of the return journey is £130. The cost of subsistence (four nights in the hotel plus meals) is £300. Austin is entitled to relief for the full cost of his business travel, £430. Journeys treated as ordinary commuting or private travel 4.10 Sometimes an employee may travel to a temporary workplace without that journey being significantly different from their ordinary commuting journey. Where that happens the tax rules deny relief in circumstances where, for practical purposes, a journey is very similar to the employee’s ordinary commuting journey. Example Keith is a health and safety inspector who lives in Leicester. His office in Nottingham is 500 yards away from a bean processing plant. When he travels direct from home to the processing plant he is going to a temporary workplace but his journey is substantially the same as his ordinary commuting journey so he is not entitled to any relief. Somewhat in contrast: Passing work on the way to somewhere else 3.39 An employee may pass a permanent workplace on the way to or from a temporary workplace. If the employee stops and performs substantive duties at the permanent workplace then there are two journeys – ordinary commuting between home and the permanent workplace and a business journey between the permanent workplace and the temporary workplace. Relief will be available for the cost of the second of these journeys – but not the first. Where the employee does not stop at the permanent workplace, or any stop is incidental to the business journey, all the business travel is as a single journey. Example Ike drives each day between his home in Southampton and his office in Winchester. One day he has to travel on business to Birmingham and back. He drives directly from home to Birmingham but stops off at his office to pick up some papers. His stop is incidental to his business journey. His business journey is from his home in Southampton to Birmingham and back. Relief is available for the cost of his journey from his home to Birmingham and back. This last example is somewhat surprising to me. I had always the thought that when part of the journey was substantially the same as a person’s commute, “at work travel” was basically the difference between total mileage (by whatever method) less that part of the travel that was substantially a commute.

Some really good answers here and to support those answers; It is only when a person is travelling home after work from their 'permanent' place of work that they are outside the employers duty of care areas so the accident as described is an accident at work as they were travelling home from a 'none permanent' place of work on behalf of their employer [there is case law here] and as already noted RIDDOR does not apply in a case where an RTC happens on a road that comes under the Highways Act and associated law