Appendix 4 of the Code of Conduct for Electoral Commissioners: Guidance on claiming fees and travel and subsistence

1.1    Fees and expenses for Commissioners are published on the Commission’s website every quarter. The information is collated to show clearly the purpose for which expenditure was incurred, in chronological order for each event for which expenses were incurred. Please see the website (About Us/How we are run/Commissioners) for an example: http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/data/assets/pdffile/0003/100596/Commissioners-Q1-10-11.pdf
1.2    It will help us if you complete your fee and travel and subsistence claims with that in mind. Succinct but informative claim forms also avoid the need for us to check with either Commissioners or other staff regarding missing or incomplete details of any claim.
1.3    There are upper limits for expenditure for expenses, but you are asked at all times to make every effort to book travel, accommodation, and utilise subsistence as economically as possible. You may not be reimbursed if you incur costs above the limits in the guidelines, and will be expected to pay any difference. We will make every effort to help you with early booking, or finding comparative costs, wherever possible.

Travel Framework

1.4    The Commission has set up a travel framework whereby service providers make provision for online bookings on accommodation, air and rail tickets and car hire. Should you wish to use the travel framework directly, Finance and Procurement staff will provide some assistance in setting up your account with the service provider, and Commission staff can help you manage your bookings. 
1.5    For more detail on all aspects of travel and subsistence policy, for example travelling by car, and taxi use, please refer to the policy itself (included in your induction pack and available on the Commission’s intranet site) or ask the Secretary to the Commission Board.
 

Overview

2.1    Fees are paid to the Electoral Commissioners on the basis of a daily rate. The daily rate for the Commissioners is fixed by resolution of the House of Commons.

 
2.2    The relevant resolution of the House of Commons provides that an Electoral Commissioner shall be paid at a rate equivalent to Band 4 of judicial salaries, currently £410 per day, and £205 per half day as the applicable rate for financial year 2022/2023. 

2.3    The fees for the Electoral Commissioners are paid direct into their bank accounts from the Consolidated Fund, and payment is made by Liberata, upon receipt of a certified fee form. 

Calculation of fees

2.4    Please keep a record of work undertaken for the Commission (or events attended in your capacity as a Commissioner) and provide a short description of your activities, including location, and times, on your fee claim form. Please refer to the published expenses on the website for examples. A reminder of what to include is at paragraph 2.8 below.

2.5    Time spent on preparation and reading may also be claimed. As a general rule of thumb, preparation for any meeting is expected to take about half a day.  There may be circumstances where preparation time may take up to a full day: the agenda may contain many in-depth matters or there may be preparatory discussions with other Commissioners.    In such cases, briefly indicate on the form what those circumstances are. Where you have units of time of less than either a whole or a half day, give start and finish times and we will aggregate those into the nearest whole and half days (a whole day being about 7.5 hours and a half day 3.5-4 hours). 

2.6    In-person attendance at events such as Commission Board meetings and all day training courses and events will usually count as one day, whether or not the total time spent on that day is less than, or exceeds, 7 hours.  Where meetings are attended virtually, the fee will be based on the length of the meeting which is usually a half day.

Fee claim forms

2.7    Please complete the Commissioner’s fee claim form (see example of completed form at Appendix B) for each calendar month and submit the form (via email or post) to the Senior Governance Adviser. If an activity crosses a month, please split the activity accordingly across two fee claim forms. Forms must be signed by the claimant. 

2.8    Claims should be completed and sent to the Senior Governance Adviser as soon as possible after the end of the calendar month, and in any event no later than the date notified to you by Secretariat.  Payment by Paymaster will normally be made on the last day of the following month, provided the forms have been received by the Secretariat by the cut-off date. Treasury require signed copies in order to make payment. The following information should be included in your fee claim form for each entry:

•    Day worked (i.e. the date for which you’re making the entry)
•    Start and finish times  
•    Nature of activity (meeting, preparation, teleconference, briefing)
•    Location 
•    Topic/title of meeting  
•    Person meeting
•    If claiming for preparation (reading) please state for which meeting or event 

Travelling time

2.9    You may claim fees for time spent travelling to the Commission’s offices.  Claims made for time spent travelling should be recorded as ‘travel’ and include start and finish times, i.e. when you left home and when you arrived at the meeting venue or hotel accommodation the evening before the meeting. However, where travel is on the same day as the meeting, a limit of one day’s claim will apply to in-person Board meetings (however long, or short, the day).  In other words, a day’s claim is the limit one can make, regardless of the length of the meeting and travel time on the day.

Dinners 

2.10    Since some Commissioners usually travel to London the evening before a Commission Board meeting, there is an opportunity to get together that evening over dinner. 

2.11    When a dinner is effectively a working dinner, involving substantive discussion of Commission business, the time spent may count towards overall preparation time for the next day’s Board meeting.  A day’s claim is the limit one can make for preparation time but you should not also claim subsistence. In other words, your fee claim may include preparation time spent discussing business over dinner but you are expected to pay for your own meal.

2.12    On infrequent occasions the Commission may hold a dinner to which members of staff as well as Commissioners are invited, for example to mark someone’s departure from the Commission. The Commission will meet the costs of the food at these dinners, but any alcohol must be paid for separately by those attending. On these occasions, Commissioners who attend the dinner should not submit a fee claim for the evening. 

3.1    The Commission will either pay direct, or reimburse you for, the reasonable actual costs of travel, accommodation, meals and certain other expenses incurred while travelling on Commission business, within the limits set out in the travel and subsistence policy. 

Expense Claims

3.2    You must claim only for the actual cost of expenses incurred wholly, exclusively and necessarily in the performance of your duties on Commission business.  The only exceptions are where you claim the flat rate Incidental Costs Allowance for miscellaneous overnight expenses.

3.3    Commissioners are required to submit an expense claim form (example of completed form at Appendix C) via post or scanned and emailed to the Secretary to the Commission Board for each calendar month for which expenses are claimed as soon as possible after the end of the calendar month, and in any event no later than the date notified to you by Secretariat.  All expenses forms should be signed and include the following:

•    name, address, bank details and National Insurance number 
•    Date of travel and mode of travel (including mileage)
•    Where you travelled from and to
•    Type of expenditure (dinner, drinks) 

3.4    In addition to that, please ensure that you include all receipts or invoices needed to support your claim, and remember to sign the form. 

Lost/No Receipt 

3.5    If you are unable to obtain a receipt, such as from a car park machine, for travel on Commission business, or have lost your receipt, you must submit your claim as normal and note the reason for absence of the receipt on the claim itself or separately by email (written confirmation is needed for audit purposes).

3.6    If you are using a personal Oyster card, you should register it for online use with TfL, and download a Journey History Report, which covers journeys made in the preceding 8 weeks, to support your claim.

Authorisation of Claims

3.7    Commissioners’ claims are certified by the Board Secretary (General Counsel). These claims are reviewed periodically by the Chair.

3.8    Details of all expenses paid to Commissioners, Executive Team and the Heads of the Commission’s offices in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are published online every quarter.

3.9    The Electoral Commission may not reimburse the expenses you claim unless your claim is supported by the necessary evidence and the person responsible for authorising the payment has confirmed their approval of the claim. 

3.10    It is your responsibility to get and keep receipts for any expenditure, and to keep a record of any car mileage you subsequently claim for. 

Travel and tax liability

3.11    The HMRC designation of the Commission’s London office as your usual place of work means that ordinarily you would not be able to claim for costs of travel to London, or an overnight stay, without it being a taxable benefit. However, the Commission has advised HMRC that it has agreed to assume the tax liability. A written statement to that effect can be provided for use with your own accounts if required.

3.12    You are expected to book the most economical travel available. Where the purchase of a Railcard would lead to overall savings for the Electoral Commission, you may claim the cost of the Railcard.

3.13    If you have a Railcard of any description, you are expected to use it to benefit from any reductions in the costs of any travel booked by you, or on your behalf, on Commission business. 

3.14    The costs of first class travel will not be reimbursed unless it was the most economical or only possible means of travel on that occasion. In that case you will be asked briefly to set out the circumstances. You may upgrade to first class travel at your own expense. 

3.15    For those of you with access to a train sleeper service, there are occasions on which that service appears more expensive than the equivalent flight or day-time rail fare, but is more economical when the saving on an overnight hotel stay is taken into account.

3.16    Meetings of the Audit Committee are usually on the day before Commission Board meetings, to save on travel costs for those Commissioners who are on both bodies. Likewise, Commission staff may seek to arrange meetings with Commissioners around Board meetings to make best use of Commissioner attendance. 

3.17    Use of taxis is discouraged.  If circumstances have made it necessary or unavoidable for example, no alternative public transport, the time of travel ruled out an alternative, the cost of public transport is comparable - please give the reason and, if sharing with another Commissioner, indicate that in addition to the other usual information (from, to, when). (Please refer to the Commission’s Travel and Subsistence policy for further detail on taxi use.)

3.18    If you use your car to claim mileage we will need to receive a copy of your car insurance which includes business use.

Reviewed and approved by Shaun McNally, Chief Executive 10 March 2023