Do civil servants spend too much on travel?

[whole diary]

[grahame]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/11462606/Civil-servants-spend-five-times-more-than-they-should-on-train-tickets.html

Regular rail users will not be surprised - even bureaucrats find it difficult to buy the cheapest train tickets, according to the spending watchdog.

Civil servants were also found to be still travelling first class for long journeys ^ despite the practice being banned by ministers when the Coalition was formed.

Officials have been reprimanded by the National Audit Office for booking standard rail tickets that cost up to five times more than they should.

The National Audit Office found that departments booked 492,177 expensive ^anytime^ train tickets in 2013/14, compared with 281,385 cheaper ^advance^ tickets.

and

The NAO analysis found that government travel costs has increased by at least 11 per cent in real terms since 2010-11, despite a fall in civil servant numbers and advances in teleconferencing technology.

Although the article headline is TRAIN tickets, the article has gone on to talk about airline tickets too.   And whilst it refers to "travel cost increase" in the last 5 years in real terms, I wonder whether or not the figures include mileage claims / whether driving costs have gone up or down.   Final thought ... if rail fares have gone up by "inflation + x%" for 5 years, is it any wonder that costs of travel have gone up by that amount for civil servants?

[Tim]

Surely it doesn't matter what tickets civil servants have (or even if they have tickets).  If they all switched to cheap tickets, the franchise would be less profitable and the companies would offer a lower premier (or demand a higher subsidy) in their bids. 

It is tax payer money going to the railway either route.

[TaplowGreen]

Surely it doesn't matter what tickets civil servants have (or even if they have tickets).  If they all switched to cheap tickets, the franchise would be less profitable and the companies would offer a lower premier (or demand a higher subsidy) in their bids. 

It is tax payer money going to the railway either route.

............that's an interesting perspective on the situation, on the other hand it may be worth reflecting that the money which Government Departments are spending on ferrying their staff around the country in 1st class seats could be better spent delivering the services for which we pay taxes?

The cheapest fares should be sought on every occasion - as is the expectation with most other businesses - although as an ex Civil servant, in my experience this was rarely the case.

[Brucey]

You all know the odd situation where 1st class advance tickets can be cheaper than standard (due to the way quotas are defined).  Guess what ticket I got bought when this was the case (and I worked in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) public sector) ... yes, the standard one at a higher price.  Plus I had to put in a claim for food, whereas the first class ticket would've included Virgin's meal and "all you can booze" package.  About ^30 wasted there.

The National Audit Office found that departments booked 492,177 expensive ^anytime^ train tickets in 2013/14, compared with 281,385 cheaper ^advance^ tickets.

In many cases, an 'advance' ticket or off-peak may work out more expensive as hotel accommodation would be required to get to meetings/conferences/training on time.  Additionally, advance fares are not available for many shorter journeys.

[didcotdean]

First class travel for civil servants was quite widely considered to be a back door way of subsidising railways back in the days when I was in a department. It was actually quite difficult at that time not to get a first class ticket for a journey if you were entitled to one. Coming from a private sector background this seemed very odd.

[broadgage]

As has been widely discussed on these forums, rail ticketing is hugely complex with many different fares available for the same journey.
From time to time people get caught with the wrong ticket and have to pay a large "fine". Some were probably trying it on, but others have been genuinely mistaken and fallen foul of some complex rule or restriction.

I suspect that the civil service often buy the most flexible and therefore the most expensive tickets simply to "play it safe" and avoid all risk of penalty fares, surcharges and prosecutions.
If civil servants were regularly caught out on the wrong train with a discounted ticket all sorts of adverse publicity and embarrassment could follow. Best by far to play it safe and buy a ticket valid on any train, run by any operator at any time.
I used to work (as a maintenance engineer) in the offices of a large and well known firm of solicitors. It was the policy of that firm to almost always buy full price rail tickets specifically to avoid any risks of penalty fares or prosecutions if someone misunderstood what ticket was valid under what circumstances.
The firm acted for a number of high profile clients, some in the transport industry. Consider the amount of mud that could be thrown if a solicitor acting for a client in the transport industry was "fined" for having the wrong rail ticket.

[TaplowGreen]

As has been widely discussed on these forums, rail ticketing is hugely complex with many different fares available for the same journey.
From time to time people get caught with the wrong ticket and have to pay a large "fine". Some were probably trying it on, but others have been genuinely mistaken and fallen foul of some complex rule or restriction.

I suspect that the civil service often buy the most flexible and therefore the most expensive tickets simply to "play it safe" and avoid all risk of penalty fares, surcharges and prosecutions.
If civil servants were regularly caught out on the wrong train with a discounted ticket all sorts of adverse publicity and embarrassment could follow. Best by far to play it safe and buy a ticket valid on any train, run by any operator at any time.
I used to work (as a maintenance engineer) in the offices of a large and well known firm of solicitors. It was the policy of that firm to almost always buy full price rail tickets specifically to avoid any risks of penalty fares or prosecutions if someone misunderstood what ticket was valid under what circumstances.
The firm acted for a number of high profile clients, some in the transport industry. Consider the amount of mud that could be thrown if a solicitor acting for a client in the transport industry was "fined" for having the wrong rail ticket.

.....are you seriously suggesting that civil servants are less able than the general public/those in the private sector to plan a journey and book tickets on the appropriate train in order to minimise cost to the taxpayer? This is money that is intended to be spent on public services, not for the convenience of bureaucrats.

Solicitors, or any other commercial organisations, are for the most part not spending taxpayers money, therefore they are free to be as profligate as they wish subject to their own regulations!

[broadgage]

From what I have seen of the ineptitude of government departments I suspect that a lot of civil servants may be less able than the public at large to select the most suitable ticket from a complex range.
But also, the general public fairly regularly get it wrong and either pay more than they need to, or get "fined" for failing to fully understand the restrictions.
In many cases, the ticket is purchased by someone else, perhaps in another department, who may be unaware of the exact times of travel in each direction.
"Ms Smith, we are sending two delegates to the meeting in Manchester next week, book rail tickets for them please"
" of course" (purchases two open returns, knowing not at exactly what time they intend to travel, nor if it would be cheaper at a different time)

The various discounted tickets are often unsuitable for business travel, including the public sector which is a business of sorts.

[TaplowGreen]

From what I have seen of the ineptitude of government departments I suspect that a lot of civil servants may be less able than the public at large to select the most suitable ticket from a complex range.
But also, the general public fairly regularly get it wrong and either pay more than they need to, or get "fined" for failing to fully understand the restrictions.
In many cases, the ticket is purchased by someone else, perhaps in another department, who may be unaware of the exact times of travel in each direction.
"Ms Smith, we are sending two delegates to the meeting in Manchester next week, book rail tickets for them please"
" of course" (purchases two open returns, knowing not at exactly what time they intend to travel, nor if it would be cheaper at a different time)




The various discounted tickets are often unsuitable for business travel, including the public sector which is a business of sorts.

...........and these are fare schemes which are approved by.........civil servants, who by your thesis are apparently too stupid to interpret them! Superb irony!

Touching that you assume that those of us in the private sector all have PAs^▸ (Public Address) to order tickets for us!  We are actually accountable for our expenditure! 

[grahame]

The various discounted tickets are often unsuitable for business travel ...

And I can't help feeling that to a degree that may be sometimes how it's intentionally planned - maximising fares to the market

[ellendune]

The various discounted tickets are often unsuitable for business travel ...

And I can't help feeling that to a degree that may be sometimes how it's intentionally planned - maximising fares to the market

What do you mean by "to a degree" and "may be".  Let me rephrase it for you. 

And I can't help feeling that to a degree that may be sometimes That is how it's intentionally planned - maximising fares to the market.

It is quite blatant.  They even call the other fares "Leisure fares" as they know that only business travellers will stump up the eye-wateringly high prices they charge those of us living more than a  stones-throw from London are charged per mile for long distance services.  Of curse they cannot charge Londoners or commuters such prices as most of them live in London which we all know is such an incredibly important place that the whole planet would cease to turn on its axis if any one said anything against it.  After all our whole centralist government lives there so you cannot touch it. 

[Phil]

.....are you seriously suggesting that civil servants are less able than the general public/those in the private sector to plan a journey and book tickets on the appropriate train in order to minimise cost to the taxpayer?

I'll try and defend that, if I may.

I was a civil servant for 30 years or so (now retired) and speaking as a person who is reasonably well up on the quirks of UK^▸ (United Kingdom) ticketing, I was extremely frustrated that I was forced to use the corporate travel office to supply me with travel tickets, when I knew full well I could save the department (and thus the taxpayer) a great deal of money by ticket-splitting or making use of anomalies in the system if only I was allowed to go online and buy my own.

So yes, I was indeed "less able than the general public or the private sector to plan a journey and book tickets."

Not because of any incompetence on my part, which is what I suspect was being imputed here, but simply because of the inflexibility of a massive corporate system.

I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear that that's not a problem unique to the Civil Service, either.

[grahame]

Phil's experience is far from unique - in the nation's Civil Service, in local government and in big companies. And it applies not only to travel tickets but also to accommodation, which must be booked through them, has you staying at hotels on a list / in a chain.   I know others (including others who regularly contribute to the forum) who are equally frustrated by the system, and at least one who has trained his travel ticket supplier to order what he needs.

In favour of the current system - it avoids those who are not in the know spending even more.  It saves the time of the officials that tickets are being purchased for (and some are highly paid). It ensures that the tickets are going to be correct / valid.  And it saves (hotel case) the possibility of the officials staying at a family business with whom they have contacts / where a backhander is paid.  And commission on bookings / tickets goes to the booking organisation to make it [more] self financing.

Having said that, as a supplier of accommodation we really dislike elements of the system.  It results in delegates who want to book a course having to split out the accommodation, and often stay - at greater expense to their company, and at inconvenience to them and lessening the course value because they are unable to socialise with their fellow attendees (where talk in the evening often turns to the subject and the linked IT world).   In the worst cases, they'll be placed in a ^140 hotel room in Bath - 10 miles / 25 minutes each way, where breakfast and parking cost extra let alone the cost of driving, where with us they would pay - including VAT^▸ (Value Added Tax), delegate rate ^84 this year.

Bookings from agencies for just hotel states (where they 'can' use us) usually come with a demand for commission - even though the stayer has often found us direct - and every one seems to have a different mechanism for working out the commission and needs rooms on hold, and much more back and forth, than a regular "booked it himself" room.    Where a stayer has NOT found us direct, these are the guests who are less likely to be happy with their stay because "x" or "y" isn't what they expected - 'lost in translation' or simply and falsely assumed.

There is one particular agency we do work closely with - helping us fill late availability with people who wouldn't otherwise stay at our place (or even in Melksham, but rather in a nearby more fashionable place).  Their commission rate is high, but it really works well for us.   So they can have their place.

And if I finish with a story of a customer course I was presenting near Heathrow, where I accepted ("had to accept, I think) the accommodation they provided.   It turned out to be 4 miles away (not usually a problem, but through a London traffic jam), backing onto industrial units (not usually a problem, except that lorry engines were being serviced / run right outside my window from 3 a.m.) and my fellow guests had been laced there because the had nowhere else to go while their entry applications were assessed from the nearby airport; that latter lead to the hilarious situation of trying to help people who spoke no English at all understand what a "full English" was - sorted out in the end by the waitress bringing out a plate of raw ingredients to show.  That element is a fond memory of polite people on all sides, but goodness knows how the health people would have looked at it, and course quality (from me) was certainly reduced through sleep and travel issues.

A long way off topic.  I can understand why speciaiist booking teams are used, somewhat as to why they are enforced, but it's not a brilliant system ...


Adding / edit ... so much to say on this one as it's close to the heart.

a) We don't worry about the 10% of delegates who don't stay with us any more;  these days our occupancy rates are high and we can often let all of our rooms anyway to people not attending courses if need be

b) It can be that the cost of time spent by an amateur such as me on booking is more than the money I would save, or that I will miss something my travel experts should pick up.

c) If I book something myself, I tend to be much more accepting of gaps in normal provision and inconvenience, especially if (as the business owner) the price is a good one.  On the other hand, if I was working for a very large organisation and with free rein, might I not be tempted to go to the top of my expense account - I have seen that done while travelling with colleagues in past roles ...

[Andrew1939 from West Oxon]

It is the government red tape that often leads to this situation.
My daughter is a civil servant and seems to be required to attend numerous meetings away from her work base. She used to work in Oxford and had to travel to various locations eastwards. Due to the quirks of the rail ticketing system in order to get to the venue in time for the meeting start time she had to travel during the peak period. However off-peak tickets become available for use earlier in the morning on the Cotswold Line than from Oxford. However because Oxford was her work base she was required to buy a ticket starting from Oxford at the anytime rate at greater cost than an off-peak fare on the same train available from Hanborough. Stupid red tape overriding common sense.

[thetrout]

The striking thing about the article is that the system is overpriced and too complex... Government set regulated fares. Yet the NAO says that Civil Servants purchasing them are not doing so correctly and buying tickets that are too expensive... Now playing devils advocate... Who is actually at fault for creating this very situation?!!

I have a serious problem with Red Tape in organisations. If it stops me doing my job effectively then it can cause serious conflict with my colleagues. Whilst this is not directly related to Rail Travel; the sort of Red Tape I have come across has left my head hurting in multiple ways. I'll list some examples.

For an organisation I was IT Management for a while I had a laptop provided by the company. The laptop over time developed a problem and I needed to replace a Wireless Network Module. Now being an IT Manager you'd think I could go into the stock room, pick the replacement part, bring it to the laptop and do the swap? Common sense yes? WRONG!

Infact I had to phone our own companies Technical Support and speak to a Level 1 Engineer to get an authorisation code to collect the part from what was literally the next room along the hall. So you'd think the conversation would be along the lines of "I'm an Area IT Manager, I need an Authorisation Code to get a replacement Wireless Module for my laptop, can you provide that please?"

Oh no... I had to spend the next 2 hours speaking to 3 different support agents who were only interested in following "the procedure" of doing technical support to tell me what I already knew was the problem. Eventually it got sent to an Area Technician for physical intervention. I was in complete disbelief when I had a ticket come through to phone myself to arrange an appointment with myself to replace the erroneous module... Only took around 4 Hours to get a 9 digit code; for a task that took me no more than 10 minutes to complete.......

So the next time a part of IT Kit I had allocated to me failed... I took the initiative to help myself from the store room and mark it in the system as defective on arrival. Not saying it was the right thing to do. But wasn't going to waste 4 hours of work if I didn't need to.


Now for the same company another crazy situation I had was when I needed to do some work abroad. I had made it absolutely clear that I would not be flying if I was to go abroad. I was insistent it was Coach, Eurostar or Boat to Calais and Train from there...

Someone in the PA^▸ (Public Address) department decided that this was an unacceptable amount of travel "inconvenience" and booked me a First Class flight instead. Consequently that poor girl got an irate phonecall from me asking why I had a flight booked from an airport that was a complete sod to get to when I made it very clear of my requirements.

PA: "We thought you didn't realise how long the Eurostar or Coach would take. Also we thought for a member of Management Team this was an unacceptable way for you to travel"

Me: "I. Hate. Flying. I. Get. Serious. Panic. Attacks!"

PA:"Oh. I'm sorry mr trout, but the flight is booked now so you'll just need to put up with it. You have a First Class ticket as you're entitled to that so I can't see it being that big a deal"

Me: "Well I won't be going if I have to fly!"

PA: "But it's the quarterly conference meeting; You have to be there!"

Me:"Wouldn't it be unfortunate if the train got delayed, or I got on the wrong one, or I missed it the day of the flight..."

PA: "Let me guess, that won't happen if it's the Eurostar or the Boat or the Coach?"

Me:"Correct"

Said staff member then decided to try and make me suffer and booked the longest Coach journey she could find. When the next conference came up a few weeks later sent me an email asking: "Want the Coach again? "

The answer "Sure; timings work well for changing too so same time departure would be fine " was not the one she was expecting!