Rising petrol prices put the squeeze on social work practitioners

Soaring fuel costs have left many social care workers out of pocket as mileage rates fail to match the hikes. Andrew Mickel considers the impact on an increasingly beleaguered workforce 

Reports from the frontline of the social care workforce make for grim reading. Not only are some private sector staff earning, at £6 an hour, less than supermarket cashiers, but they are being hit by increases in living costs, linked to rises in inflation and VAT.

But it is the soaring cost of fuel that is hitting workers the hardest.

Many staff, particularly home care workers, use their own vehicles to travel to clients. According to the AA, drivers are now paying £8.40 more for a tank of petrol than a year ago as the average cost of petrol rose to an all-time high of £1.32 a litre. George Osborne’s Budget on 23 March is not expected to cancel out the huge increase in costs.

Unison reports that many councils are cutting car allowances and some providers are paying as little as 10p a mile (see below).

The impact on staff varies depending on the mileage rate received: rates for council staff, who may also receive a lump sum of more than £900 a year, remain the most generous but they have not risen with prices at the pumps.

As the graph below shows, the petrol price for an average-sized car has risen from 12.7p per mile in 2006-7 to 19.5p per mile in 2010-11. This means petrol takes up 48% of mileage rates today, compared with 37% four years ago. Unison also warns that many staff are being reclassified from the essential car user rate to the less generous casual user rate. “It is causing disputes as employers come for those allowances,” says Helga Pile, Unison national officer for social care.

Some councils use the rate set by the Treasury which allows employers to reimburse staff before paying tax as a guide for their mileage rates: 40p a mile for the first 10,000 miles, and 25p a mile after that. It has been unchanged since 2002.

A petition submitted to 10 Downing Street website in 2008 to increase the rate was met with the response that, although petrol cost more, fuel efficiency had increased. And a review by the Treasury in the same year concluded that the rates “were never intended to reflect the actual cost of motoring for every car, but are still sufficiently high to cover the business motoring expenses of most people”.

That may have been true when it was written, but in November the AA calculated the average cost of motoring at 42p a mile for a small car. Many social care staff use older or larger cars: for family cars, the cost is 61.5p a mile. An employee driving a family car for 10,000 miles a year and receiving 40p a mile would pay more than £2,000 from their own pocket.

Most home care staff work in the independent sector, and are one of the lowest-paid groups that rely most on cars. Their mileage rates vary from a few pence to about 40p a mile, but they are not easily compared because different service providers may adjust wages to account for fuel or give lump sum payments for wear and tear.

According to Shereen Hussein of the Social Care Workforce Research Unit, King’s College London, 11% of staff in the adult social care sector in England said their employer does not pay any of the cost of travelling between clients

Rising fuel costs are exacerbating the effects of wage freezes which contribute to the sector’s turnover rate of more than 20%.

In some areas, employees are fighting back. A Unison branch in Norfolk helped negotiate a rise from 25p to 40p a mile for staff of domiciliary care provider Careforce.

But cash-strapped councils are squeezing contracts, leaving providers with little room for manoeuvre on rates. So far, Hertfordshire domiciliary care provider Sage Care has lost three staff because of the fuel price increases. Janet Hiscutt, director of nursing and care, says: “We wouldn’t consider cutting the staff wages, but they have felt that they have had a pay cut by the increased cost of fuel.”

Care providers are therefore working together in unprecedented ways to save cash. Ideas floated at a recent meeting of the Hertfordshire Care Providers Association include plans to ask independent fuel providers about launching a loyalty scheme, whereby care staff are rewarded for using petrol stations with lower prices, or asking staff from rural care homes to provide domiciliary services for people in remote areas.

The ideas are nebulous but, even if they help ease the pressures, the root causes remain untackled. The United Kingdom Home Care Association wants council contracts to rise in order to reflect increased costs; Unison wants the 40p tax-free rate to be revisited.

“David Cameron was talking about understanding the importance of fuel price increases on ordinary families,” says Pile. “Well, it’s in their hands to make a difference.”

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Calculating the cost of driving

A typical care worker travels an average of 350 miles per month in her own car to visit service users, and receives 30p a mile from her employer. She pays £69 in petrol to cover the visits each month, and receives £143 in mileage. This leaves just over £70 to cover the additional cost of motoring including taxation, insurance, maintenance, and depreciation.

However, analysis of the figures show that the amount left in her pocket at the end of each month, after petrol costs have been accounted for, has gone up by little more than £5 in the last five years, despite substantial increases in the cost of insurance and road tax.

Sue Jerrard is a community care assistant for Sage Care in rural east Hertfordshire, providing domiciliary care for about 12 calls each shift.

The organisation pays staff 10p a mile as well as contact and travelling time. Jerrard receives 20p a mile, having retained the rate under the Transfer of Undertakings Regulations when her job moved to Sage Care from another firm.

“Until the past six months, the mileage rate more or less covered it, but now it doesn’t,” Jerrard says. “I average 150 miles a week and you just know that six months ago you were putting £25 in your tank and that would cover your work. Now it’s double that.

“We do try to cluster as much as possible to make sure we’re not wasting petrol, but if you have just one person in a remote village in your area you still have to see them. Most of us have thought about leaving but, because we enjoy the job, we put it out of our minds.”

Beat the fuel price rises

● Know what’s going on with fuel in your area so you know where to stop. Don’t assume that because it’s a supermarket, it’s cheaper. Try petrolprices.com for the best rates.

● Extra weight means extra fuel so take out unnecessary stuff from the boot, and remove roof racks to cut wind resistance.

● Service your car regularly to maintain engine efficiency, and make sure you use the correct specification of engine oil.

● Turn off your air conditioning, heated rear windscreen, demister blowers and headlights when you don’t need them.

● Change gear as soon as possible without labouring the engine – try changing up at an engine speed of 2,000 rpm in a diesel car or 2,500 rpm in a petrol car.

Source: The AA

CASE STUDY: ‘Most of us have thought about leaving’

Sue Jerrard is a community care assistant for Sage Care in rural east Hertfordshire, providing domiciliary care for, on average, 12 calls each shift.

The organisation pays staff 10p a mile as well as contact and travelling time. Jerrard receives 20p a mile, having retained the rate under the Transfer of Undertakings Regulations when her job moved to Sage Care from another firm. However, she is paid for contact time with the client only.

Jerrard says the cost of living has risen, but petrol is a particular problem. “Until the past six months, the mileage rate more or less covered it, but now it doesn’t,” she says.

“I average 150 miles a week and, though I don’t keep a note of it, you just know that six months ago you were putting £25 in your tank and that would cover your work. Now it’s double that.

“We do try to cluster as much as possible to make sure we’re not wasting petrol, but if you have just one person in a remote village in your area you still have to see them.

“Most of us have thought about leaving but, because we enjoy the job, we put it out of our minds.”

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