EIM32324 - Travel expenses: travel for necessary attendance: safeguards against abuse: journeys treated as private travel: example

An employee lives and works in Norwich, where he is an administrator for a manufacturing company. His sister lives in Peterborough and he visits her there in February. Two months later he has to return to Peterborough to attend a meeting of the company’s focus group. The meeting takes all day and he visits his sister for 2 hours in the evening.

His main purpose in visiting Peterborough is to attend the focus group meeting. The visit to his sister on the same day is merely incidental to that business purpose. So the visit is not substantially private travel, see EIM32320. He can deduct the cost of his travel. It does not matter that he made the same journey for a private reason in February. That earlier journey was private travel but it does not follow that all travel by him to Peterborough must be private travel.