Poultry workers not entitled to national minimum wage for time spent travelling on employer minibus from home to farm

In Revenue and Customs Commissioners v Taylors Services Ltd (dissolved) [2025] EWCA Civ 956, the Court of Appeal held that an employment tribunal had erred when holding that time spent by poultry workers travelling from their homes to different farms across the country was "time work" for the purposes of regulation 30 of the National Minimum Wage Regulations 2015 (SI 2015/621).

The tribunal had seemingly tried to find a way to address what it perceived as an injustice to the workers, whose return travel time sometimes added more than eight hours to their working day. However, the Court of Appeal has affirmed that, where the meaning of legislation is clear, as it was here, the tribunal's job is simply to give effect to that meaning. It must not be tempted to apply a purposive approach which overrides the clear wording of the legislation. It is for the government to address any injustice separately.

For employers, this case may be helpful in demonstrating that the provision of transport to collect workers from their homes and drop them off at their workplace may mean that the workers do not have to be paid the NMW for that travel time under regulation 34 of the NMW Regulations 2015. However, this is likely to happen rarely in practice. Therefore, employers must be aware that there are circumstances in which travel time does count as working time for NMW purposes.

It should also be noted that this case concerned only the NMW Regulations 2015. A different approach will apply to determining whether travelling time amounts to working time under the Working Time Regulations 1998 (SI 1998/1833).