Q. I am a limited company contractor working on an contract for a client. I am expected to work from the client’s offices full time. Recently the client moved their offices and do not have enough car parking spaces for both staff and contractors and have therefore provided separate car parking facilities at a different location that contractors must use, only staff are now allowed to use the office car park. Contractors must park their cars at the other facility, wait for a minibus supplied by the client and be transported to the office location and do the reverse trip at the end of the day. This is adding on average between 30 to 60 mins on the contractors working day.
The client is not allowing contractors to charge for this lost time. Is there any legal argument, perhaps even from an insurance standing point as to whether it is legal for the client to not allow contractors to charge for this lost time. The contract does not include any arrangements regarding car park use, or separate arrangements for staff/contractors as the office move occurred post contract set-up. Essentially, I am happy to use the alternative car park/minibus service as long as I can bill my transit time as I believe during this time I should be covered by the client’s insurance and am therefore on their time not mine.
A. Travelling to and from the clients site is not working time. A contractor only starts to perform the work when he or she are actually on the clients site.
A contractors right to parking facilities and travel expenses is subject to the contract. As the contract does not provide for parking facilities or traveling expenses there is no automatic right to them.
The company operating the travel bus will have compulsory insurance for all that travel on the vehicle.
Separate car parks for Staff and Contractors. IR35 friendly at the very least!
They don’t even have to provide parking. They could tell you to get a Taxi from the nearest NCP. ££. Though unlikely they’d keep any contract staff to complete the work longer than 1 month after the announcement. All city centre contracts I’ve had don’t provide parking. You either get the train or pay for your own parking.
Presumably the use of the new car park is not compulsory – if not, then you simply pay to park closer (or use another form of transport).
the only time that you may have a case to claim that your work time begins when you enter the car park they provided would be:
1. If it were actually compulsory – then you have arrived at your designated place of work.
2. It may just be possible to claim if there’s no alternative parking close to the client’s offices and no other way to get there.
The latter may be rather difficult to prove (any station would need to be far away and no parking available – or perhaps the price of close-by parking is truly astronomical).
You could always get another contract – shouldn’t be too hard in this market!
Is this a wind-up? Client does not care about your travel arrangements. Not should they. You’re lucky they’re letting you use this facility.
They could say tough. And why not park closer than 30 mins away and pay yourself?