Posted By Allan St.John Holt
I'd be grateful for any information from readers who deal with safety reps with a geographical coverage. The question is whether or not you pay travel expenses to safety reps to travel between locations within their 'patch'. I can't find any case law or tribunal reports covering the point and am looking for current practice. Please email me direct if you wish.

Happy New Year to all,

Allan

Posted By Allan St.John Holt
Thanks Richard, obviously one reason why not is the cost of almost 100 reps roaming full-time around their patches doing inspections, investigating and the rest of it. I have put up a starter argument that expenses would be part of providing "facilities" for safety reps, but as I say the potential costs are considerable and at present are settled on a local basis. We are going for a new national agreement and want to cover all the bases to creat a level pitch.

Allan

Posted By Mike
For business travel if it is unreasonable to use public transport we pay for own car use - 40p/mile for first 10,000 miles in one financial year, then 25p/mile for miles above 10,000. For expenses to remain tax-free there should not be any ordinary commuting or private travel included, although in reality the combinations of such circumstances are endless and occupy a lot of space in the published Inland Revenue guidance. I am not directly involved in approving these claims, but I believe that many large employers negotiate with HMIRC for there to be no tax liability (up to the limits above) by proving that they do appropriate internal audits. I am personally in this category. Whereas others deduct tax and the employee has to claim it back from HMIRC.

Posted By OJ
Try and look at it a different way.

If you were acused of not providing the resources to enable your reps to perform their functions, how would you defend it ?

Posted By Allan St.John Holt
I'm now being asked if there is any case law / Tribunal decisions on this topic, and I can't find any. If anyone can help please let me know!

Thanks,

Allan

Posted By paul eastell
There isn't a definate answer under the SRSC Regs although Reg 4A(2)....every employer shall provide such facilities and assistance as safety representatives may reasonably require for the purpose of carrying out their functions under section 2(4) HASAWA.
Therefore the answer is simple. Either the employer pays travel expenses (as he does to other employees carrying out work activities), or he provides the transport (pool car).

Its a blunt answer but if an employer is quivering over 'genuine' safety reps being paid travel expenses for carrying out their functions then they have mis-understood the safety reps real value in their organisation.

It needs to be remembered that safety reps need to inform the employer in most cases of their intentions to make inspections.

Posted By bigwhistle
Allan

We all know what the employer should do but with the current climate I think it would be ill advised to state an interpretation. The HSE recommend ACAS for such issues as getting to the House of Lords can be an expensive process.

Posted By Jim Walker
Allan,

Whilst I can't help you with any firm evidence, my opinion would be you ought to provide these people with sufficient resouces to do their jobs.
Maybe it could be funded from your CEO's massive bonus -sorry, could not resist.

Posted By Mike Draper
Allan

Interesting question. I guess there wouldn't be very many people with relevant experience or even much case law to fall back on, as there can be very few organisations that face this sort of question. However there are a few principles that might be relevant.

It seems to be a common feature in employment law and practice for employers to reimburse travelling expenses, with such expenses being considered separate to wages or payment for services. According to HMRC, "Only payments to meet the cost of business travel attract tax relief and fall outside liability for NICs."

So what is business travel? It appears to be either "travel in the performance of the duties of the employment" or "travel for necessary attendance at a temporary workplace." Although even the second option is based on the proviso that this is for the purpose of doing some work.

The key question would then seem to be whether or not the activities of Safety Rep would be considered to be part of the "duties of the employment". After looking at SCSR, I suggest that maybe they are not.

SCSR makes it quite clear that an employer should provide time off with pay to allow a Safety Rep to discharge their duties under SCSR, suggesting that this is not part of their employment.

I suppose the argument might go along the lines that you don't hire people to be Safety Reps, do you? People volunteer to take on this role on behalf of the people they represent. It wouldn't be reasonable to pay travel and accommodation expenses for a Shop Steward to attend a TUC conference either, it's not what you are paying for. Plus, as an employer do you have a duty to ensure that Safety Reps discharge their duties? I don't think so, so how can it part of their employment? Carrying this argument through, ultimately suggests that perhaps the cost of travel should be met by the union (like that's ever going to happen).

However the workforce must be adequately represented, so if you refused to pay travelling expenses, then this would mean that there would be a need to perhaps increase the number of Safety Reps.

So the question is about achieving a sensible balance between the costs of have fewer Reps and paying reasonable travel costs in some manner, as opposed to having more Reps and paying for more time off and more training.

As an aside, it might also seem sensible to suppose that a Safety Rep that wants to visit another place of work, other than their normal place of work, to carry out their duties as Safety Rep, travels at their own risk. So if they use their own car and and suffer an injury as a consequence, this is not business travel per se, and therefore they should not be able to hold the company liable for compensation.

Whereas paying "expenses" suggests that inadvertently you are accepting liability, by indirectly saying that this is business travel.

Like others here I can only conclude that the sensible course is to talk to HMRC and see how they view the nature of these specific expenses and the options for making payments to people for non-work related travel, and the HSE about how they view the duties of Safety Reps.

You may find that carrying out the duties of a Safety Rep is indeed part of their employment once they assume the role, in which case you would have to pay expenses as you would for any other worker travelling on business.

Any way round, I think you will find that this is an area where you are leading the way.

Mike

Posted By peter gotch
Hi Allan

I don't think there is any case law, and I think this is one for collective bargaining as you alluded earlier.

To all intents and purposes the rep is working for the Union, not Royal Mail, so I am unconvinced by the arguments about roving reps doing business mileage for you.

Other readers - remember that the employer does not employ someone to be a safety rep - their Union chooses to exercise their rite under the Regulations to appoint them to this role.

Regards, Peter

Posted By Jack
Are they really 'working for the Union'? True they are appointed by the Union but they are there to represent the employees and carryout the range of functions.

Some organisations with many sites expect the representatives to be based at the site where they carry out their functions. Would this approach work for Royal Mail ie remove most of the need for reps to travel.

Even with this approach there will usually be the periodic need to travel eg to safety committees. In organisations I have worked traveling expenses are usually paid for this.

In practice you will probably find that insisting on one rep per workplace is more costly (more time off for training, for example) so it may be more efficient for the company to have roving reps. If that is the case (ie to keep costs down for the company) surely paying travel expenses would not be unreasonable. Not doing so would discourage reps from carrying out their functions and the research does seem to suggest that such participation by employees is linked to improved h&s performance.

To get back to the original question: I think it highly unlikely there is case law (and very few organisations where this issue is so acute - ie large number of employees based at a very large number of sites!)