Not unusual for folks to travel 2 hrs to and from the orriface in my world.

As others have said it depends if this is your / there usual place of work. If you take a job 2hr away or move 2hr away from work that is up to you but if you are traveling on behalf of work it’s work time. I travel abroad about 12 times a year but even if it was still in the UK it would make no difference. Travel for work is work.

Its the “usual” place of work in this particular situation.

Its accepted that coming in late/early then apply some sense of reasoning to the time you are in, then buggering owf is all accepted.

In the OP’s case I too would count travelling time into “working hours”

I think we’re not allowed to drive more than 200 miles and do a day of work.

I’m not sure because they always offer a hotel even if it’s less, if the customer is paying. I’ve had regular hotels 75 miles from home.

“Yeah, I understand, just not sure how practical that is – got a week in Bristol soon, they’ll decline a hotel request because it’s only a couple of hours away, ”

Used to do training at a satellite branch 2 hours away.

Used to leave at regular work time and get to plant about 9.30 and leave again about 2..30 in afternoon so we were back in home location at lousing time.

Worked out well .

Working time directive is pretty clear on this

Driving time counts as working time.  YOu must have and cannot opt out of having 11 hours rest between working shifts ( except in very rare circumstances)  You cannot be made to work more than 48 hours a week unless you sign the opt out

There are also regulations about driving times

Join a union!

OP, IT training? New(ish, about a year) owners a VC company?

I’m a trainer so travelling around to sites training folks on a daily basis.

Ditto. Mind you, I’ve been a contractor for the last 5 years, 7 before that I was working for an insurance company with company car (which I’d presume you have?)

These days, if I want the gig then I have to travel. My principal will pay for the hotel so what I do is reckon the travel time and distance and work out whether it’s “worth” them paying for me to stay over. Worst case for me is Manchester which is only 56 miles away but is a pig to get into; if it’s part of a longer trip then I’ll often just book it if the price is roughly the same as the 112m @35ppm plus parking.

BITD my employer had a 2 hour rule as well. When I worked for operations we were allowed a bit of flexibility on that if we had a multiple night stay. Of course, if you’re cipd then the rules are that you need to be in the room 1 hour prior to the start time and 1/2 hour afterwards so make sure you factor that in 😉

When all the regional trainers were moved to work for Learning and Development (!) the world kinda went to pot. The new bully / boss did some work on our working weeks and with travel, working to cipd rules and to the training plan, we were all doing 60+ hours per week.

So then they told us to stop monitoring our travel time 😉

I am mostly talking about stand-up training delivery here as well. In other words, you’re active and “on show” for up to 8 hours per day. If it’s more of a coaching style you’re doing then I reckon it’s perhaps a bit less critical.

In your situation I’d say “it depends”. How much can you arrange for yourself without involvement? How much of an “us and them” approach do you want to have? I’m fortunate that I don’t regard what I do as work – I enjoy it and would be willing to do pretty much whatever was needed. I’d make sure I knew the rules about this (see posts above), and be sure of the google maps times for the actual times of travel. And reckon in your actual mileage rate and overnight costs. Does your employer pay for meals etc? If you contract you’re not paid for these so you find all sorts of ways of doing things cheaply.

As an aside, that boss I mentioned above once pulled up a colleague on a 3 mile difference between a journey to a venue, and the return. At 14p per mile. So £0.42. The conversation took approx 10 minutes to have between someone earning about £25 p/h and someone on about £30 p/h. And that’s the problem with bean counters – sometimes you’re better off working through the problem yourself and working out the ways around the issue, no matter how correct you are. I wouldn’t want to be out of regular employment at the moment, even though LinkedIn tells me there are jobs around.

Does anyone actually check what you book? What does your manager say about this? Do you log your hours?

I don’t know exactly where you live but you could always threaten to use public transport for your Bristol trips? With all the mesing about that entails the travel time will go way up, and the cost of daily return fares to Bristol will make a hotel look cheap.

More seriously, HSE has a Driving at Work leaflet downloadable from the web. That asks some pretty pointed questions.

Costs of traveling, be it mileage payments or miles on your lease car, surely would make a girlh look like a no brainer for the Bristol gig? Never mind the h&s and minimum wage points raised?

If it’s a regular thing then it should def be part of your normal working hours. I only travel rarely and then it’s usually just for one day and to a client site (and they’ll be expecting me there 9am-5pm as that’s what they’ll have paid for). So if it’s more than a couple of hours travel I’ll expect my company to fund a hotel stay the night before – I don’t bother trying to claim travel time back though (I would if I were expected to do it regularly though…)