You should be paid travel expenses wherever you’re volunteering. If you’re with an external charity registered with the Volunteering Service, they will pay your expenses unless they have made a special arrangement with us to waive that aspect of our Service Standards.

If you’re with one of our registered Student-Led Projects, then you can claim your expenses from the Volunteering Service. Please note that we will pay for bus, tube or standard class rail travel within Transport for London Zones 1-6. We will only pay for travel outside of Zone 6 in one–off, exceptional circumstances such as conference attendance, and only then with prior agreement.

Please note that if you are volunteering with a Student-Led Project affiliated with a charity, you will need to claim your travel expenses directly through the charity.

If you are a Project Leader and your project is obtaining reimbursement of your expenses from your affiliate charity please get in touch.

PROOF OF TRAVEL

To claim travel expenses, you must ensure you provide us with proof of travel.

We strongly recommend that you create an Oyster/Contactless account on the TfL website. You can then register your Oyster or contactless card to view and download a record of your journey history. Please note that your journey history, on a registered Oyster or contactless card, can only be viewed up to eight weeks after travel.

If you’re using an Oyster Card that’s not registered, you can get a printout of your last 10 journeys via the ticket machines at any London Underground station.

If you’re buying a paper tube ticket make sure you get a VAT receipt – the ticket machines might retain your ticket. A debit/credit card receipt that just shows the amount spent is not sufficient.

We can not accept bank statements, debit/credit card receipts or receipts only showing that you have topped up your oyster card as proof of travel.

CLAIMING EXPENSES

Once you’ve got your proof of travel:

  • Complete the Expenses Webform with your details and receipts
  • The deadline for submitting expenses is 4pm on Wednesday and reimbursement will take up to two weeks.
  • We’ll put your claim in for processing. You’ll be paid via your bank account.
  • Note that we can only reimburse money into your own UK bank account

PLEASE NOTE

Travel expenses will only be reimbursed if they are for activities that are included in the Student-Led Project’s approved risk assessment, so please check with your Project Leaders before completing any travel related to the project.

Travel expenses cannot be reimbursed except where a valid receipt showing the journey has been obtained. Credit/debit card receipts, bank statements, or Oyster top-up receipts are not valid and cannot be accepted.

You can only view the journey history of a registered Oyster or Contactless Card for up to 8 weeks after travel, so ensure that you submit your travel expenses regularly.

We will only reimburse out-of-pocket travel expenses and will not reimburse weekly travelcards unless you are volunteering more than twice a week. Please contact the Student-Led Projects Team to obtain authorisation before purchasing a weekly travelcard.

If you have any queries, please contact us at [email protected]

Last updated 2 weeks ago Read time 2 mins