If your staff travel between one client's home and the next during the working day, that travel counts as working time. It has to be paid at least the minimum wage, the same as the time spent cleaning.

This doesn't stretch to the start or end of the day. Getting from home to the first booking, and from the last booking back home, is ordinary travel to work and isn't counted. It's the travel between appointments, once the working day has started, that counts.

The rule in law

Regulation 34 of the National Minimum Wage Regulations 2015 sets out which hours count as working time for a worker paid by the hour. It covers time spent travelling in connection with the work during the working day, and that's how travel between clients is treated for minimum wage purposes.

HMRC's guidance for employers

HMRC's internal manual, at reference NMWM08400, sets out how this applies when you're working out whether a worker's pay meets the minimum wage. If you pay a flat rate per clean without adding anything for the travel in between, your staff's pay can fall below the minimum wage once that travel time is added in.

The National Living Wage and National Minimum Wage are the lowest hourly rates an employer can legally pay a worker, and the rate that applies depends on the worker's age. The government reviews these rates each April, so the figure that applied last year is not necessarily the one that applies now.

A separate rate covers mileage, which is what an employer can pay tax-free when a cleaner uses their own car or van to travel for work. This rate is set by HMRC and is reviewed on its own schedule, independently of the minimum wage.

Both figures change from time to time, so the rate to use is the one published on GOV.UK for the date the pay is worked out.