Minimum wage - petrol - explain please?

Cornucopia

footyguy wrote: »

According to me.

If you were employed as a farm hand, would you expect to provide your own tractor?

If you were employed as a lorry driver, would you expect to provide your own lorry?

If you werev employed as an ambulance driver, would you expect to provide your own ambulance?

So why, if you are employed as a carer, do you think you should be expected to supply your own car???

This is not a great argument - all of those other vehicles are specialised to the job, and none of them are the kind of vehicle that an employee might already have.

Whether you like it or not, and whether it is right or not, many employees use their own vehicle for work. (I did it myself years ago).

So, there's no principle against it being done. The question is how much is paid (if anything) by the employer.

In answer to the OP's original question: yes, this set-up is common in the care industry.

footyguy

Cornucopia wrote: »

...Whether you like it or not, and whether it is right or not, many employees use their own vehicle for work. (I did it myself years ago)....

Only because you agreed to do so...and were presumably paid the appropriate expenses (assuming these were authorised/approved by the employer)

Not everyone owns their own car.

footyguy

bylromarha wrote: »

...What does tax relief look like per mile covered - do you know how this works please?

Tax relief is exactly that - a relief against the amount of tax otherwise due.

For an employee earning only £7 an hour, working only 16 hours a week, and probably in the region of only 30-40 weeks per year, it doesn't sound like she will be liable to pay any tax anyway.

silverwhistle

footyguy wrote: »

Not everyone owns their own car.

I once had a job as a junior systems analyst and was obliged to use a pool car - real workhorses with an agricultural Perkins diesel. One day I'd booked a car to go to a meeting with a manager at HO but for some reason it wasn't available. "Can't you take your own?" (an old banger which cost me a hundred quid). "Sorry, I'm not insured":D. Shame really, as a couple of trips to HO at the decent mileage rate would have made a decent dent in paying for the car, but as they'd always made it clear I couldn't use my own I'd bought the cheapest insurance possible.

If I were the OP and she decides she doesn't want the job I would accept the offer (keep the job centre happy) but say that it would be subject to receiving a mileage allowance or cycling or walking between appointments. Any willingness to use her own car expressed at the interview would of course have been made on the assumption of a mileage allowance...

bylromarha

Well, she was offered the job today. She told them she wasn't happy about the fact she was expected to pay her own mileage. They came back with a counter offer of an additional tutor role for 2hrs a week, for 10 weeks at £24ph. This role "could" expand...and they'd even help her to apply for a loan to pay for her tutor training...

Cannot quite believe this company.

She feels she has little choice but to accept. I'm trying to tell her she really doesn't need to accept a post which will make her worse off, but she's worried the job centre will cut her benefits if she refuses as she feels more checks will now be made due to the government.

EDIT: The calculators have added in the extra WTC, CTC she'd receive and she is definitely £200min worse off a month by taking this job.

Ali1802

I'm a community carer, I travel many hundreds of hours per week using my own vehicle, I don't get mileage paid, I also don't get travel time paid. I'm literally paid for the time I'm in a clients house. I do get 20p per hour towards travel! I spoke to ACAS who said by law the company should be paying my travelling time at minimum wage. However as I'm leaving the company in 10 days I'm not going to rock the boat just yet. It's horrific costing me a small fortune in fuel!

loskie

Ali if you add all your travelling time to your working time divide your wages by it you will be on less than the min wage which is unlawful.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-32715728
coincidentally in the news today

[Deleted User]

bylromarha wrote: »

Cannot quite believe this company.

She feels she has little choice but to accept. I'm trying to tell her she really doesn't need to accept a post which will make her worse off, but she's worried the job centre will cut her benefits if she refuses as she feels more checks will now be made due to the government.

Please don't forget our great government don't want people 'under-employed' so they can't have it both ways
This is easily fightable/contestable more than most situations only because I remember what was said in 2012/2013 by the Jobcentre - and it was still the same gov back then who would have had me in breach of contract with their mad idea of register with so many care agencies for getting enough of a weeks work or ultimately come, sign and look for proper job

Does the lady want to be in care work? Perhaps running it down and this Assessor is better then the Carer role, I can see why they might try and wiggle saying £7 was a good hourly rate for a weekday as much as it erks me when I was thinking today, what would happen at loss of car?

bylromarha

Deleted%20User wrote: »

Please don't forget our great government don't want people 'under-employed' so they can't have it both ways
This is easily fightable/contestable more than most situations only because I remember what was said in 2012/2013 by the Jobcentre - and it was still the same gov back then who would have had me in breach of contract with their mad idea of register with so many care agencies for getting enough of a weeks work or ultimately come, sign and look for proper job

Does the lady want to be in care work? Perhaps running it down and this Assessor is better then the Carer role, I can see why they might try and wiggle saying £7 was a good hourly rate for a weekday as much as it erks me when I was thinking today, what would happen at loss of car?

She has worked in this area before and was tempted to interview as a previous colleague contacted her and told her it'd be "about £10ph" for a slightly more responsible role for that which she was actually interviewed for.

I truly don't know what she'd be expected to do if her car broke. Probably be encouraged to apply for a loan to pay for a hire car. I'd laugh if it wasn't so serious.

Transformers

Marktheshark wrote: »

Its not just fuel, the boys in blue pull her over and they are going to want to see some business insurance, not the cheap stuff that covers you for use in your own business, normal insurance only covers social domestic and commuting to a usual place of work, not using your car at the bequest of an employer.

Then the car breaks and she has no money to buy a new one as she puts the wages in the tank every day.

A 'business user' clause isn't that difficult to obtain - I had it for years when I had a mobile role using my own car.

It said something like 'for use in the policy holder's business / employment but excluding private hire or the carrying of paid passengers' - it's just a small add-on to a normal policy not a specific business policy.

Thousands of people have it.