20 June 2022 Rail strike claims and final budget positions for the 2021-22 financial year
Date published: 20 June 2022
Rail strike claims
We know there is some concern about the impact of the planned rail strikes on 21, 23 and 25 June, and the difficulty you might face travelling to or from a place of work or event location. We have published guidance on our website to answer any queries you may have.
If you normally travel by train, we would advise that you should consider carefully whether travel is necessary during this week and whether planned events can be rescheduled, and that you work and hold meetings remotely if at all possible.
IPSA does not reimburse travel costs for commutes – i.e. journeys between your home and normal place of work (Westminster or the constituency office). However where commuting to an office location is unavoidable, and you incur significant costs as a result (e.g. for a long taxi journey), you may consider applying for contingency funding. Approval will need to be based on the necessity of the journey, the level of cost and the alternatives considered.
Where a staff member is required to travel to their normal place of work but is unable to return home, or it would be unreasonable to return home and then attempt to travel in the following day, we will consider requests for hotel costs, with an explanation of the circumstances and unavoidable nature of the cost.
Likewise, where an MP does not have central London accommodation (e.g. an outer London MP), we will consider requests for hotel accommodation to enable them to work from Westminster if this is required. To note, hotel stays where an MP is working late beyond 10pm are claimable, in line with the normal rules.
Decisions on exceptional circumstances will be taken on a case-by-case basis, and as always we expect value for money to be a key consideration in decision-making by MPs and staff members.
Other journeys for parliamentary work (other than commutes) are claimable, in line with the normal rules of the Scheme.
For further information, please see our rail strike guidance.
2021-22 final budget positions
We have now completed our year end processes including all movements of costs between budgets and years. You can now view the total spend against your budgets for 2021-22 in IPSA Online. You can view your dashboard by selecting Menu > Information pages > 2021-22 Dashboard.
Thank you for your work over the year-end period. We were able to stick to our deadlines and achieve the closure of year end in June, slightly earlier than planned. With your help we hope to complete the process even earlier next year. We would like to hear your feedback on the year-end process. Please complete the short survey below to tell us how it went for you.
We will start to contact a small number of MPs who had an overspend for 2021-22 to arrange repayment. If you are concerned about your overspend and haven’t spoken to the team yet, please book a call with your account manager so we can assist you. All overspends need to be repaid in full by 1 November 2022 in order to avoid the overspend being published in our 2021-22 Annual Publication.
We are now preparing our Annual Report and Accounts and readying the data for Annual Publication, both of which will be published later this year.
Best wishes
The IPSA Team