Evening meal allowance - London

[Countdown]

loskie said:

Ours HAVE to be booked through appointed agent too. It costs more than you or I would pay as normos.

That's Civil Service for you.

Is it still Redfern? That was who MOJ used to use when I worked there. They were supposed to be as cheap as any of the OTAs.

[loskie]

no Corporate Travel Management(CTM) prior to that something like Carlson Travelit

Redfern used to provide vouchers for staff bonuses. Travel too IIRC

[Countdown]

loskie said:

no Corporate Travel Management(CTM) prior to that something like Carlson Travelit

Redfern used to provide vouchers for staff bonuses. Travel too IIRC

IIRC what is now CTM used to be called Redfern. Completely unrelated but they have (or had) the contract for housing asylum seekers on those cruise ships.

[Rayny]

TriumphStag3.0V8 said:

matrignano said:

QuartzDad said:

Our global policy is batst crazy, there is a 100 page pdf listing random towns/cities/regions with max hotel rates such as

Berkshire £66
Coventry £106
Edgware £110
England £88
Heathrow £87
London £125
Salford £144
Wembley £155
Milton Keynes £181
Rotherham £38
Middlesex £42

Salford has a larger allowance than London?

£181 for Milton Keynes???? You would have to pay me to stay there! LOL at Rotherham for £38

Or anywhere in England (presumably other than the listed towns and cities) for £88...

[Cupid-stunt]

h0b0 said:

We are treated well.

London is £115/meal. (not per day)


I checked and this is not based on level so is for everyone.

any jobs going??

[journeymanpro]

Some proper miserable sounding places to work here.

The general rule of thumb for my place is don't take the pee, I've never been questioned and usually spend £40-45 inc a couple of pints.

[basherX]

journeymanpro said:

Some proper miserable sounding places to work here.

The general rule of thumb for my place is don't take the pee, I've never been questioned and usually spend £40-45 inc a couple of pints.

This is what ours says, the policy’s explicit that there’s too much variation globally to meaningfully impose limits so behave reasonably and if you think you might be doing something marginal ask your line. Lunch specifically excluded when travelling to other company sites in the UK but not for foreign travel. FTSE100 company fwiw.

[Rough101]

We are on £20, anywhere in the world.

Some may get creative with the mileage to compensate, as there is no Spoons in Monaco.

[h0b0]

Cupid-stunt said:

h0b0 said:

We are treated well.

London is £115/meal. (not per day)


I checked and this is not based on level so is for everyone.

any jobs going??

I have to admit the number sounds crazy high to me. I’m new so haven’t tested the limits. It’s very unlikely I would spend anywhere near that much. But, for London I would expect £50 for dinner.

Our expense policy seems to have been written based on “what about..”. There are 3 rules for travel class for each level above Director for flying in the US domestically alone. This includes CEO who has use of the corp jets. But, clearly someone said “what about….”

The food expense is a 24 page document that not only lists out by country, it separates by city and local currency. There are cities that we have no business in and will never go to. Again someone said “what about…”. In this case it probably went “…Joe, he has family in that city we will never go to and he may stop by”. Instead, it should have gone “it’s in Italy and covered by our Europe policy”.

It goes a long way to demonstrate the culture. It’s very considerate. It likes to have an answer for everything. But, can we just get something done?!?!?!

p.s. global financial services that everyone has heard about but very few use in England.

p.p.s. Lunch is free at any of our US facilities. Unintended consequence is people working from home until 11AM. Coming in for lunch so they have their badge scanned. Going home at 2PM.

[Countdown]

basherX said:

journeymanpro said:

Some proper miserable sounding places to work here.

The general rule of thumb for my place is don't take the pee, I've never been questioned and usually spend £40-45 inc a couple of pints.

This is what ours says, the policy’s explicit that there’s too much variation globally to meaningfully impose limits so behave reasonably and if you think you might be doing something marginal ask your line. Lunch specifically excluded when travelling to other company sites in the UK but not for foreign travel. FTSE100 company fwiw.

Out of interest who decides what is and isn't "taking the pee"? Would it be the expenses team? Your line manager? Your Head of Department? Where there aren't clearly defined rules there's a risk of bias creeping in. Also (in my experience) regardless of whether a person is a junior admin assistant or a C-Suite executive, because human nature is what it is people will tend to claim the most they can get away with. There was a case last year where the Citibank employee was sacked tor buying two lots of sandwiches, there was the MP's expenses scandal and if your boss wants to get rid of you he might decide to through your expenses with a fine toothcomb.

IME policies need to be very clear for the benefit of both the employee and the employer. By all means have an allowance that says "Daily limit £3000" but then it's clear to all staff what the limit is. "Don;t take the pee" is just a HR headache waiting to happen.

[Blown2CV]

Countdown said:

If you're staying overnight in London what does your Company allow you to claim for an evening meal?

Our limit is £35 but we've had quite a few people suggesting it's out of date and should be nearer to £60 per person. In my experience, whilst you may not get a 3 course meal with drinks for £35 it's perfectly possible to get a decent meal for that amount.

Just curious as to what other companies are paying.

i tend to just have deliveroo in my hotel room. £35 is entirely reasonable even if eating out to be fair.

[basherX]

Countdown said:

Out of interest who decides what is and isn't "taking the pee"? Would it be the expenses team? Your line manager? Your Head of Department? Where there aren't clearly defined rules there's a risk of bias creeping in. Also (in my experience) regardless of whether a person is a junior admin assistant or a C-Suite executive, because human nature is what it is people will tend to claim the most they can get away with. There was a case last year where the Citibank employee was sacked tor buying two lots of sandwiches, there was the MP's expenses scandal and if your boss wants to get rid of you he might decide to through your expenses with a fine toothcomb.

IME policies need to be very clear for the benefit of both the employee and the employer. By all means have an allowance that says "Daily limit £3000" but then it's clear to all staff what the limit is. "Don;t take the pee" is just a HR headache waiting to happen.

There’s something like 90,000 employees so a centralised approach just won’t work.

Expenses are all (supposed to be) reviewed by line managers and approved/queried. I think I’ve seen two within teams I’ve been in (in almost 20 years) receive serious challenge. We do have background automation searching for oddities and there’s a whistleblower procedure which I’ve seen result in action against some poor behaviour. (One chap famously bought a horse on his company credit card).

The system (Concur) and the corporate agent enforce limits on hotel prices (which are largely globally agreed with major providers) and airfares according to policy.

Until not long ago I ran the financial control framework so I’ve seen more of this than some of my colleagues and whilst I sympathise with the need for airfare and hotel limits I know that if we put something around subsistence it would move from “limit” to “target” and I do generally believe most people, at least in Finance where I work, know when they’re taking the piss.

[Jamescrs]

Think mine is a little over £25 for evening meal. Always managed perfectly well on it, I don’t have expensive tastes and frequently manage a 2 course meal if I pay for my own drinks separately.

I was staying in the park plaza a few years ago on the Thames and was back too late for a proper meal only room service available so I got Dominoes to deliver to the hotel that night.

[Ken_Code]

It could be the business I’m in, or just the people in it that I tended to travel with, but few people wanted much more than a slice of pizza or some peanuts at the end of a night away from home.

[Pit Pony]

QuartzDad said:

matrignano said:

Salford has a larger allowance than London?

Logic doesn't come into it. There is somewhere in California that has a $45 limit.

To be fair, you wouldn't want your staff to actually stay in Salford. You'd find them a boutique hotel in Didsbury.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/VdaVT3rtEfWcXVPU8

11 Disdbury Park.

And Go out to Eat in West Didsbury. Somewhere like this

https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZR1sgJCQ2DracFG9A

ZENA

[RayDonovan]

10 years at my place and we've only ever sacked one person in Sales and it was for expense fraud.

Our system automatically refuses an expense claim if it's out of policy.

[Sporky]

We had someone go significantly overboard - five figures. He was given the choice of paying it back, being fired and taken to court, or going to (IIRC) five years' notice with the money taken out of his pay over that period.

He's still with us...

[Pit Pony]

A couple of weeks ago, I had 4 nights in Holland for work.
Cash advance not available, no company credit card, hotel paid in advance.

Expense claim form so badly designed that I struggled to fill it in. Took me hours to account for 19 simple transactions.

It's still sitting on my boss's desk, in an open plan office.

Yes. I did photocopy every receipt, because I don't trust anyone. £475 out of my own money, which I need refunding. Trains, Taxis and Meals.

[IJWS15]

I see many posters are forgetting that they are not paying for the meal they would have eaten if at home………

Last company I worked for had a £27 evening meal allowance and a (IIRC) £10 all day allowance. If breakfast wasn’t at the hotel then it was in the all day allowance. I think I exceeded the meal allowance once although you learn to eat in the bar to avoid the room service charge.

One thing the policy did was kill early starts, other big companies I worked for just required it to be reasonable and I never had a breakfast claim refused when I had left home at 6 am.

Don’t underestimate the cost of expenses to the business, I once went to check progress on a claim and the lady in accounts referenced a screen which had a total of £8k at the bottom. I asked and the number was the expenses I had been paid that financial year (to Sept), in 1995 it was about 40% of my salary.

[borcy]

basherX said:

There’s something like 90,000 employees so a centralised approach just won’t work.

Expenses are all (supposed to be) reviewed by line managers and approved/queried. I think I’ve seen two within teams I’ve been in (in almost 20 years) receive serious challenge. We do have background automation searching for oddities and there’s a whistleblower procedure which I’ve seen result in action against some poor behaviour. (One chap famously bought a horse on his company credit card).

The system (Concur) and the corporate agent enforce limits on hotel prices (which are largely globally agreed with major providers) and airfares according to policy.

Until not long ago I ran the financial control framework so I’ve seen more of this than some of my colleagues and whilst I sympathise with the need for airfare and hotel limits I know that if we put something around subsistence it would move from “limit” to “target” and I do generally believe most people, at least in Finance where I work, know when they’re taking the piss.

That's interesting, we've a similar number (100k+) employees and all expenses are centrally controlled in the sense that's there's hard limits on all meals/allowances.