NHS Travel Time Pay: Is Time Between Visits Paid?

Last updated: 6 November 2026 · Figures verified against the NHS Employers 2026/27 pay circular.

By the NHS Bands Pay editorial team

Community nursing is the part of the NHS that runs on wheels. A district nurse, a community staff nurse, a health visitor or a healthcare assistant on a community patch can spend a third of the working day in the car: base to first visit, visit to visit, visit to base, with notes written in lay-bys and lunch eaten between calls. The pay question that follows is simple to ask and easy to get wrong: is that driving time paid, and if so, at what rate? The answer has two halves, and they point in different directions. The time is working time, and it is paid. But it is not paid as a separate allowance, and it does not automatically earn extra money on top of salary. This guide works through both halves, with the 2026/27 hourly rates by band, five worked examples, the mileage position, and the 48-hour week.

The confusion is understandable, because two different systems touch the same journey. Mileage pays for the car. Salary pays for the minutes. A nurse who drives 25 miles between two visits receives 59p a mile for the vehicle and the hourly rate for the time, and the two figures are calculated separately, claimed separately, and taxed differently. Staff who only look at the mileage line can conclude that travel time is unpaid, and staff who only look at the salary can conclude that it is paid twice. Neither is right. The rest of this page keeps the two apart, because that is where the money actually sits.

Working time is not the same as paid time

The distinction matters, so it comes first. Under the Working Time Regulations 1998, travel between appointments counts as working time when travelling is an integral part of the job. The European Court of Justice confirmed it in the Tyco case, C-266/14, decided on 10 September 2015: technicians with no fixed place of work, who drove from home to their first customer and from their last customer home, were working for the whole of that travel, because they were at their employer's disposal and carrying out their duties throughout. For workers with no fixed base, the journey from home to the first appointment and from the last appointment back home is working time, on the same footing as the time spent at the appointment itself.

But the Tyco ruling is about working time, not about pay. It decides how hours are counted for rest breaks and for the 48-hour weekly limit. It does not by itself entitle a worker to be paid for travel time, and it does not decide what rate applies. Pay depends on the contract. For salaried NHS staff the contract answers the question plainly: the salary covers the whole contracted week, and travel between visits sits inside that week, so it is paid at the normal hourly rate. For a bank worker paid by the booked hour, or an agency worker paid by the shift, the answer depends on the booking terms, which is why this page keeps the two groups apart.

That is the honest position, and it is worth stating plainly because two common claims on forums are both wrong. The first claim is that Tyco means every minute of travel must be paid on top of salary. It does not: Tyco is a working-time ruling, and salaried staff are already paid for travel inside contracted hours, so there is nothing extra to add. The second claim is that travel time is unpaid because it is not patient-facing time. That is wrong too: the salary pays for the whole working week, and a community nurse's working week is mostly travel and notes, with the patient-facing minutes in between. If a roster shows only patient-facing hours and treats the driving as the nurse's own time, the roster is wrong, and the later sections of this page explain what to do about it.

What counts as working time

Not every journey counts. The test is whether the travel is part of the job, and whether the worker has a fixed base. The table below sets out the journeys community staff actually make, and the position of each one. The key line is the second one: travel between visits is working time for everyone, whatever the base position, because the visits are the job, and getting between them is part of doing it.

The home-to-first-visit line is the one that catches people out, because it depends on the base. Most NHS community staff have a fixed base: a health centre, a community hospital or a clinic where the day starts, notes are written and the bag is restocked. If you have a fixed base, the drive from home to that base is ordinary commuting, and it is not working time and not paid, in the same way that a ward nurse is not paid for the drive to the hospital. Travel from the base to the first visit, between visits, and back to base is working time, and it is paid.

The position is different for staff with no fixed base at all. For them, the Tyco ruling means the journey from home to the first visit and from the last visit home also counts as working time. That matters most when a trust closes a base and sends staff straight from home, because the start point of the paid day can move with it. If your trust has closed your base and now sends you straight from home, ask your manager whether your start point has changed, because that changes where paid time begins. Do not assume the answer, and do not assume it is unchanged: ask, and get the answer in writing.

Two more journeys deserve a mention. Travel between two work sites during the day, for example from a clinic to a patient's home and then to a second clinic, is working time, because it is travel in the course of the job. Travel to a training course or a conference required by the employer is also working time. Travel outside normal working hours, for example driving to an evening meeting after the working day has ended, is not working time under the Regulations unless the contract says otherwise, so check the contract before assuming it is paid.

How travel time is paid for salaried NHS staff

Salaried Agenda for Change staff are paid for the whole contracted week, and the travel sits inside it. A community nurse on a 37.5-hour contract who spends 11.25 hours of that week driving between visits is paid for all 37.5 hours, and the travel is paid at the same hourly rate as the visiting time. There is no separate travel-time allowance in Agenda for Change, and none is needed, because the salary already covers the minutes. The hourly rate is the annual salary divided by 52.2 and then by 37.5, which is the standard Agenda for Change basis, and the table in the next section lists it at every band and pay point for 2026/27.

Extra pay only starts when the travel pushes the week beyond the contract. Hours above 37.5 in a week are overtime under Section 3 of the Agenda for Change terms. For Bands 1 to 7, overtime is paid at time-and-a-half, and double time on bank holidays. A Band 5 nurse at entry, on £16.38 an hour, earns £24.57 an hour for overtime, so 1.5 hours of travel that take the week to 39 hours are worth £36.86. Bands 8 and 9 get time off in lieu instead of overtime pay. Part-time staff are paid plain time for hours above their contracted hours up to 37.5, and overtime rates only above 37.5, so a part-timer whose travel pushes the week from 22.5 to 30 hours is paid plain time for those hours, not time-and-a-half.

Weekend and night travel is paid at the unsocial-hours rate, not the plain rate. Under Section 2, Saturday and weekday night hours, from 8pm to 6am, attract time plus 30% for Bands 4 to 9, time plus 35% for Band 3, time plus 41% for Band 2 and time plus 47% for Band 1. Sunday and public-holiday hours attract time plus 60% for Bands 4 to 9, time plus 69% for Band 3, time plus 83% for Band 2 and time plus 94% for Band 1. One hour of Saturday travel for a Band 5 nurse at entry is worth £21.29, and one hour on a Sunday is worth £26.21. One hour of Saturday travel for a Band 2 healthcare assistant is worth £18.20, and on a Sunday £23.63. The full unsocial-hours picture, including the night window and the bank-holiday position, is in the unsocial hours and overtime guide.

One rule stops double counting. Overtime and unsocial-hours enhancement cannot both be claimed for the same hours, so a Saturday hour is paid at the Saturday rate, not at overtime plus the Saturday rate. If travel takes a Saturday shift over 37.5 hours, the Saturday rate applies, because it is the rate for those hours. If travel on a weekday evening takes the week over 37.5 hours, the overtime rate applies to the hours above 37.5, and the night enhancement applies to the hours inside it. Payroll applies the higher of the two where they overlap, not both together, and any payslip that shows both for the same hour is worth querying.

Hourly rates 2026/27: what an hour of travel is worth

The table below lists the hourly rate at every band and pay point in England for 2026/27, on the 37.5-hour week. The hourly rate is the annual salary divided by 52.2 and then by 37.5. Band 2 is a single spot rate, so entry and top are the same figure. Bands 3 and 4 have two points, and Bands 5 to 9 have three: entry, intermediate and top. Find your band and pay point, and you have the value of one hour of travel time inside your contracted week.

The gap between bands is wider than most staff expect, because an hour of travel is worth the hourly rate, and the hourly rate more than doubles between Band 2 and Band 9. One hour of travel is worth £12.91 at Band 2 and £16.38 at Band 5 entry, but £28.87 at the top of Band 7 and £66.30 at the top of Band 9. That is why the same driving pattern can be a small part of one person's week and a large part of another's, and why the worked examples below use different bands: the maths is the same, but the money is not.

Two hours is a useful yardstick, because it is roughly the travel in a normal community day: four visits with 30 minutes between them. At the top of Band 5, two hours of travel are worth £39.90. At the top of Band 6 they are worth £49.16, at the top of Band 7 £57.74, and at the top of Band 9 £132.60. Double those figures for a four-hour driving day, halve them for a one-hour day, and you have a quick sense of any patch before doing the exact maths. The chart above plots the same figures, so the gap between the bands is visible at a glance.

Worked examples

Five examples cover the cases payroll sees most often: a community nurse with long gaps between visits, a district nurse with short gaps, a healthcare assistant on a busy patch, travel that pushes the week into overtime, and weekend travel. Every figure below is worked from the hourly rate in the table above, rounded at the end.

Example 1: Band 5 community nurse, 45 minutes between visits

A community staff nurse at Band 5 entry, on £32,073 a year, drives 45 minutes between visits. One gap is worth £12.29, because 45 minutes is three quarters of an hour, and three quarters of £16.38 is £12.29. With four visits a day and three gaps between them, the travel is 2.25 hours a day, worth £36.86. Over a five-day week that is 11.25 hours of travel, worth £184.28, and over a full year of 52.2 weeks it is £9,619.16 of salary spent driving. That is not extra pay: it is part of the £32,073 salary, and the point of the figure is to show how much of the salary the travel consumes. If the roster only counts the visiting time, more than a quarter of this nurse's week is missing from it. See the community staff nurse salary guide for the full Band 5 picture, and the district nurse salary guide for the Band 6 caseload-holder role.

Example 2: Band 6 district nurse, 30 minutes between visits

A district nurse at the top of Band 6, on £48,117 a year, drives 30 minutes between visits. With five visits a day and four gaps, the travel is 2 hours a day, worth £49.16 at £24.58 an hour. Over a five-day week that is 10 hours of travel, worth £245.80. District nurses carry the caseload as well as the visits, so the travel sits alongside assessment, planning and team leadership, and it is the part of the day that most often gets squeezed when the caseload grows. If the travel is not on the roster, the caseload is being planned as if the nurse could teleport between houses, and the day will run late. The district nurse hourly pay guide works through the same band in hourly terms, including the unsocial-hours and on-call picture.

Example 3: Band 2 healthcare assistant, 20 minutes between visits

A healthcare assistant on the Band 2 spot rate of £25,272 a year drives 20 minutes between visits. With seven visits a day and six gaps, the travel is 2 hours a day, worth £25.82 at £12.91 an hour. Over a five-day week that is 10 hours of travel, worth £129.10. Healthcare assistants are the largest community workforce, and they are the group most likely to be rostered by visit count rather than by hours, so they are the group most likely to find travel missing from the roster. If you are rostered for seven visits and the gaps add up to two hours, the working day is two hours longer than the visit list suggests, and the roster should show it. The healthcare assistant salary guide covers the Band 2 to 3 picture, and the Band 2 salary guide covers the scale itself.

Example 4: Travel pushes the week into overtime

A Band 5 nurse at entry, on £16.38 an hour, has a contracted week of 37.5 hours. In one week, slow traffic and a rural patch push the travel up, and the week runs to 39 hours. The 1.5 hours above 37.5 are overtime under Section 3, paid at time-and-a-half, which is £24.57 an hour. The overtime is worth £36.86 for the week. If the same nurse had simply worked 39 hours of visiting time, the overtime would be the same, because overtime is about hours, not about what filled them. Two details matter. First, Bands 8 and 9 do not get overtime pay: they get time off in lieu. Second, if the travel had stayed inside 37.5 hours, there would be no overtime at all, however slow the traffic was, because the week had not gone over the threshold. The overtime calculator works out any week, including the unsocial-hours overlap, and the unsocial hours and overtime guide covers the rules in full.

Example 5: Weekend travel

A Band 5 nurse at entry works a Saturday visiting round, and drives one hour between visits. Saturday hours attract time plus 30% for Bands 4 to 9, so the hour is worth £21.29, not £16.38. On a Sunday, the same hour attracts time plus 60%, so it is worth £26.21. A Band 2 healthcare assistant on the same round is paid differently, because the percentages are higher at the bottom of the scale: one hour of Saturday travel is worth £18.20, and one hour on a Sunday is worth £23.63. A Band 6 district nurse at the top of the band is paid £31.95 for an hour of Saturday travel and £39.33 for an hour on a Sunday. Weekend travel is the part of the rota where the enhancement is most often missed, because the travel is recorded as plain time and the Saturday or Sunday rate is only applied to the visiting hours. If your Saturday payslip shows the visits at the enhanced rate and the travel at plain time, query it.

Mileage is separate from time

Mileage reimburses the cost of running your own vehicle, and it is not pay for the minutes spent driving. The two are calculated separately, claimed separately, and taxed differently, and adding them together as if they were one figure is the most common mistake in this whole subject. A district nurse at Band 6 entry who drives 25 miles between two visits, taking 45 minutes, receives £14.75 in mileage at 59p a mile and £15.31 for the 45 minutes of time at £20.41 an hour, a total of £30.06 for that leg, and the two figures appear on different lines of the payslip.

The mileage rates are set nationally under Section 17 of the Agenda for Change terms. For a car, the rate is 59p a mile for the first 4,500 business miles in a year, and 36p a mile after that. Motorcycles are paid 30p a mile, pedal cycles 20p a mile, a passenger carried on NHS business adds 5p a mile, and the reserve rate is 30p. Travel between home and your normal workplace is not claimable, even when the rest of the day is business travel. The full rates, the phase-in dates, and the HMRC comparison are in the NHS mileage rates guide, and the mileage calculator splits any claim between the 59p and 36p tiers.

Take a heavy driving year. A community nurse who drives 60 business miles a day, five days a week, for 52.2 weeks covers 15,660 miles in a year. The first 4,500 miles at 59p are worth £2,655, and the remaining 11,160 miles at 36p are worth £4,017.60, for a total of £6,672.60 in mileage for the year. That total pays for fuel, wear, insurance and depreciation on the car, and it is not taxed as salary up to the HMRC approved mileage allowance payments, which are 55p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles and 25p a mile after that. Because the NHS rate of 59p is above the HMRC rate of 55p for the first 4,500 miles, the small excess is taxable, and the mileage guide explains how that is handled. A nurse driving 6,000 miles in a year receives £3,195 in mileage, and that figure is the same one used in the community nurse examples elsewhere on this site, because the rates are national and the maths does not change between pages.

One practical warning belongs here. Mileage is claimed on miles driven, and the claim needs a log: date, start, destination, miles, and purpose. Travel time is recorded on the roster, not on the mileage claim, so the two records have to agree with each other. If the mileage log shows 60 miles a day and the roster shows no travel time at all, one of the two records is wrong, and the roster is the one that is usually wrong. Keep both records, and compare them at the end of the month, because a mismatch is the earliest sign that travel time is being missed.

The 48-hour week

Travel time that counts as working time counts towards the 48-hour average weekly limit under the Working Time Regulations 1998, unless you have signed an opt-out. That is the part of the Tyco ruling that has the most practical effect on community staff, because travel is the largest single block of non-patient-facing time in a community week, and it is the block most often left out of the calculation.

Work it out for a full-time member of staff on 37.5 contracted hours. With 10 hours a week of travel between visits, the working week is 47.5 hours, just inside the limit. With 12 hours a week of travel, the week is 49.5 hours, over the limit on average, and the trust has to deal with that: cut the travel, cut other hours, or ask for an opt-out. Community rotas with long rural patches are the ones that trip this limit, because the distances are long and the visits are spread out, so a rural nurse can be over 48 hours while an urban nurse on the same contract is comfortably inside it.

If your working week regularly runs past 48 hours once travel is counted, raise it with your manager and your union, and check whether you have signed an opt-out you have forgotten about. An opt-out is voluntary, and it can be withdrawn, but it has to be in writing, and it has to be yours: a manager cannot opt you out, and a roster that assumes an opt-out without one is not compliant. The Working Time Directive pay guide covers the 48-hour limit, the opt-out, and the rest-break position in full.

Part-time staff

Part-time staff are paid for travel time at the same hourly rate as full-time staff, because the hourly rate does not change with the contracted fraction. A part-time community nurse on a 0.6 contract at Band 5 entry is paid £16.38 an hour for travel time, the same as a full-time colleague at the same pay point. What changes is the number of hours: a 0.6 contract is 22.5 hours a week, so travel time fills a larger share of the working week, and it is easier for a part-timer to find that the travel alone takes up a third of the contract.

Take a 0.6 nurse who works three days a week and travels 2.25 hours a day. That is 6.75 hours of travel a week, worth £110.57 of salary, which is nearly a third of a 22.5-hour contract. Hours above the contracted 22.5 up to 37.5 are paid at plain time, and overtime rates only apply above 37.5, so a part-timer whose travel pushes the week to 30 hours is paid plain time for those hours, not time-and-a-half. Mileage is claimed on the same per-mile rates regardless of contracted hours, and annual leave is pro rata, which is covered in the annual leave guide. The part-time pay guide works through term-time and compressed-hours variants for staff whose pattern is not a simple fraction.

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland

Scotland moved to a 36-hour week in April 2026, so its hours maths differs from England. A Band 5 nurse in Scotland is paid £34,494 at entry and £42,977 at the top in 2026/27, which works out at £18.36 an hour at entry and £22.87 at the top on the 36-hour week. A 45-minute drive between visits is worth £13.77 at entry. The overtime threshold is also 36 hours in Scotland, not 37.5, so travel that pushes a Scottish week over 36 hours is overtime a day and a half earlier, in effect, than the same travel in England. The Scotland pay guide carries the full Scottish position.

Wales pays a 3.3% award for 2026/27, implemented on time, with a Real Living Wage floor that lifts the bottom of the scale. A Band 2 member of staff in Wales is paid £26,300 a year, which works out at £13.44 an hour, and the same travel-time rules apply: travel between visits is working time, paid at the hourly rate inside contracted hours, with overtime above 37.5 hours. The Wales pay guide carries the Welsh scale and the floor in full.

Northern Ireland is different, because the 2026/27 award of 3.3% is recommended but not yet implemented there, so Northern Ireland pay figures for 2026/27 should not be quoted as if they were in payment. The working-time position is the same, because the Working Time Regulations apply across the UK, but the hourly rates are still on the earlier scale until implementation. The Northern Ireland pay guide carries the current position, and the Scotland and Wales guides carry the devolved-nation scales.

Bank and agency staff

Bank and agency staff are paid differently, and the travel-time rules are different too. A bank worker is paid for the hours booked, at the bank rate for the shift, and whether travel between visits is inside those booked hours depends on how the shift was booked. If the booking is for a set of visits with travel time built into the shift, the travel is paid as part of the shift. If the booking is for a number of visits with no travel time allowed, the travel may not be paid, and the only remedy is to check the booking terms before accepting the shift, because the Agenda for Change travel rules do not apply to a bank booking in the same way they apply to a substantive contract.

Agency staff are in the same position, with one extra complication: the agency rate is an hourly rate for the shift, and the agency's terms decide whether travel between assignments is inside the paid hours. Ask the agency, in writing, before the shift, and keep the answer with the booking. If the answer is that travel is not paid, the effective hourly rate for the shift is lower than the headline rate, because the unpaid travel hours sit alongside the paid ones, and that is worth knowing before accepting the shift rather than after. None of this changes the working-time position: travel between visits is working time for bank and agency staff too, and it counts towards the 48-hour limit in the same way.

What to do if your travel time is not counted

Start with the paperwork, not an argument. Check your contract and your roster: does the roster show travel time as working time, or does it show only patient-facing hours? Check ESR to see whether your contracted hours match what you actually work. Then raise it with your line manager, with the numbers: how many hours a week you spend travelling, what that is worth at your hourly rate, and whether the week runs over 37.5 or 48 hours once travel is counted. A manager who can see the numbers can usually fix the roster, because the fix is normally a rostering change, not a pay decision.

If the manager cannot fix it, the next step is HR, and then your union, because travel time that is working time but is not being counted is a working-time issue as well as a pay issue, and it affects rest breaks and the 48-hour limit, not just the payslip. Keep a record of the hours you travel, with dates, for at least a month, because a month of numbers is harder to dismiss than a general complaint. If the payslip itself is wrong, the payslip guide explains how to read it line by line, and the pay disputes guide sets out the formal steps if payroll will not correct it.

One last point, and it is the one that matters most. Travel time is not a perk, and it is not a favour. It is working time, and for salaried staff it is paid time, because the salary covers the whole contracted week. A community service that does not count travel time is planning rotas as if its staff could be in two places at once, and the staff pay for that planning error in unpaid hours and in weeks that run past 48 hours. Counting the travel, at the right rate, is the minimum a fair roster owes, and it is the starting point for every other conversation about community pay.

Frequently asked questions

Is travel time between NHS visits paid?

Yes, in the normal case, because it is part of your contracted hours. A salaried Agenda for Change member of staff is paid for the whole contracted week, and travel between visits sits inside that week, so the time is paid at your normal hourly rate. A community nurse at Band 5 entry, on £16.38 an hour, is paid £12.29 for a 45-minute drive between two visits, because that 45 minutes is working time inside a 37.5-hour week. What is not automatic is extra pay on top of salary: travel time only earns overtime or unsocial-hours money when it pushes the week over 37.5 hours, or into Saturday, Sunday, night or bank-holiday hours. Mileage is separate: the 59p a mile pays for running the car, not for the minutes spent driving it.

Does travel time count as working time?

Yes. Under the Working Time Regulations 1998, travel between appointments counts as working time when travelling is an integral part of the job, and the European Court of Justice confirmed it in the Tyco case (C-266/14, 10 September 2015): for workers with no fixed place of work, the journey from home to the first appointment and from the last appointment back home is also working time, on the same footing as the time spent at the appointment itself. That matters for the 48-hour average weekly limit and for rest breaks, because travel time counts towards both. It does not by itself decide pay: the Tyco ruling is about working time, not about what a worker is paid, and whether travel time is paid depends on the contract. For salaried NHS staff the answer is normally yes, because the travel falls inside contracted hours.

Is the drive from home to my first visit paid?

It depends on whether you have a fixed base. Most NHS community staff do: a health centre, community hospital or clinic where the day starts. If you have a fixed base, the drive from home to that base is ordinary commuting, and it is not working time and not paid, in the same way that a ward nurse is not paid for the drive to the hospital. Travel from the base to the first visit, between visits, and back to base is working time. The position is different for staff with no fixed base at all: for them, the Tyco ruling means the journey from home to the first visit and from the last visit home also counts as working time. If your trust has closed your base and now sends you straight from home, ask your manager whether your start point has changed, because that changes where paid time begins.

What happens when travel pushes me over 37.5 hours?

Hours above 37.5 in a week are overtime under Agenda for Change Section 3. For Bands 1 to 7, overtime is paid at time-and-a-half, and double time on bank holidays. A Band 5 nurse at entry, on £16.38 an hour, earns £24.57 an hour for overtime, so 1.5 hours of travel that take the week to 39 hours are worth £36.86. Bands 8 and 9 get time off in lieu instead of overtime pay. Part-time staff are paid plain time for hours above their contracted hours up to 37.5, and overtime rates only above 37.5. Two warnings: overtime and unsocial-hours enhancement cannot both be claimed for the same hours, so a Saturday hour is paid at the Saturday rate, not at overtime plus the Saturday rate; and travel that is simply slow traffic inside a contracted week is paid as salary, not as overtime, because the week has not gone over 37.5 hours.

Do I get mileage as well as travel time pay?

Yes, because they pay for different things. Mileage reimburses the cost of running your own vehicle: fuel, wear, insurance and depreciation. Travel time pay is your salary for the minutes spent driving. A district nurse at Band 6 entry who drives 25 miles between two visits, taking 45 minutes, receives £14.75 in mileage at 59p a mile and £15.31 for the 45 minutes of time at £20.41 an hour, a total of £30.06 for that leg, and the two figures appear on different lines of the payslip. Mileage is claimed under Section 17 at 59p a mile for the first 4,500 business miles in a year and 36p a mile after that, and it is not taxed as salary up to the HMRC approved rates. Travel between home and your normal workplace is not claimable mileage, even when the rest of the day is. See the full rates and worked examples in the mileage guide.

Does travel time count towards the 48-hour week?

Yes. Travel time that counts as working time counts towards the 48-hour average weekly limit under the Working Time Regulations 1998, unless you have signed an opt-out. A full-time member of staff on 37.5 contracted hours who spends 10 hours a week travelling between visits is at 47.5 hours, just inside the limit. The same member of staff spending 12 hours a week travelling is at 49.5 hours, over the limit on average, and the trust has to deal with that, either by cutting the travel, cutting other hours, or asking for an opt-out. Community rotas with long rural patches are the ones that trip this limit, so if your working week regularly runs past 48 hours once travel is counted, raise it with your manager and your union, and check whether you have signed an opt-out you have forgotten about.

Is travel time paid for part-time NHS staff?

Yes, at the same hourly rate as full-time staff, because the hourly rate does not change with the contracted fraction. A part-time community nurse on a 0.6 contract at Band 5 entry is paid £16.38 an hour for travel time, the same as a full-time colleague at the same pay point. What changes is the number of hours: a 0.6 contract is 22.5 hours a week, so travel time fills a larger share of the working week. A 0.6 nurse who travels 2.25 hours a day over three days spends 6.75 hours a week travelling, worth £110.57 of salary. Hours above the contracted 22.5 up to 37.5 are paid at plain time, and overtime rates only apply above 37.5, so a part-timer whose travel pushes the week to 30 hours is paid plain time for those hours, not time-and-a-half.

What should I do if my travel time is not being counted?

Start with the paperwork, not an argument. Check your contract and your roster: does the roster show travel time as working time, or does it show only patient-facing hours? Check ESR to see whether your contracted hours match what you actually work. Then raise it with your line manager, with the numbers: how many hours a week you spend travelling, what that is worth at your hourly rate, and whether the week runs over 37.5 or 48 hours once travel is counted. If the manager cannot fix it, the next step is HR, and then your union, because travel time that is working time but is not being counted is a working-time issue as well as a pay issue. Bank and agency staff should check their booking terms instead, because their travel arrangements are set by the shift booking, not by an Agenda for Change contract, and the rules are different.

Sources and independence

Source: NHS Employers, 2026/27 pay award announcement.

Source: NHS Employers, unsocial hours payments.

Source: GOV.UK, maximum weekly working hours and working time guidance.

Source: Court of Justice of the European Union, Federación de Servicios v Tyco, case C-266/14, 10 September 2015.

Source: Agenda for Change Terms and Conditions, Section 2, unsocial hours; Section 3, overtime; Section 17, mileage; and the Working Time Regulations 1998.

NHS Bands Pay is an independent guide and is not affiliated with the NHS. Figures were verified against official sources on 6 November 2026 and can change, always confirm with the relevant official body before making financial decisions.