The home to base, or base to home, mileage is often referred to as the commuter mileage, i.e. the mileage you would normally incur commuting to work. With effect from 1st July 2013 the Agenda for Change terms and conditions relating to the reimbursement of travel costs are being revised. Paragraph 17.15 “states that employees will be reimbursed for miles travelled in the performance of their duties which are in excess of the home to agreed base return journey.”
What this means is that where a journey starts or ends at your home you are only entitled to be reimbursed for the mileage that is above your normal commuter mileage. This can be confusing, particularly where there may be several legs to a journey that ultimately starts/ends at somewhere other than your base (e.g. home, hotel for overnight stays), as the commuter mileage should be deducted from the overall journey distance. The following gives a graphical explanation of a journey where the commuter adjustment would be applied; the home to base mileage is 12.5 miles.
In EASY the above journey would appear as follows:
There may be times when the commuter adjustment may be applied differently to the example above. The reason being is that EASY does not know the exact order in which individual trips occurred, and the system can only assume that they occurred in the order claimed. If you add further trips afterwards that may skew how the commuter adjustment is applied, but the total home to base adjustment for the day will be correct.
Staying Overnight
On occasions you may travel to a meeting, or attend a course or conference, that requires you to stay overnight. In that situation, you may be travelling from home to the venue on one day, and returning home a day or two afterwards.
In this case the system looks at the total mileage that you would normally incur travelling to and from work, and deduct the total commuter mileage from the mileage that you are claiming between your home and the venue. This because the AfC terms and conditions, paragraph 17.15, states "Employees will be reimbursed for miles travelled in the performance of their duties which are in excess of the home to agreed work base return journey", which means that you are only reimbursed for any mileage that is in excess of your total daily commute.
You should consider what your total commuter mileage would have been on that day if you were not travelling to the venue. As the commuter mileage would be at your own cost, you therefore should only be reimbursed for the additional mileage costs that you are incurring on that day by travelling to the venue.