Travel

InSignLanguage Ltd · Document code ISL-LEG-B09 · Annex to the Terms and Conditions of Service (ISL-LEG-B01) · Governing law: England & Wales

Version 1.0 · Effective 26 August 2026 · Reviewed annually.

Read with: ISL-LEG-B07 Face-to-Face Interpreting · ISL-LEG-B10 Expenses at Cost · ISL-LEG-F-I Cancellation and No-Show Schedule

1. The short version

The fee covers the interpreting and the journey. Interpreters travel to you, and they arrive early enough to meet the Deaf participants and agree how they will work. Neither the travelling nor the early arrival is charged to you.

Travel is quoted separately in one situation only: where nobody is within reasonable reach of the assignment. When that happens we tell you the figure before we confirm, and you decide.

2. Why travel is quoted and never sold as an extra

A travel charge is not a product. It depends on who is actually free on your date and where they are, and we do not know that until we have asked them. Putting a fixed travel fee on a booking page would mean charging some clients for a journey that costs us nothing and under-charging others for one that costs a great deal.

None of this is something you tick at checkout. There is no travel add-on, no parking add-on and no accommodation add-on on any booking page, and there will not be one. Anything beyond the fee is quoted to you and agreed before we confirm, or it does not happen.

So the sequence is always the same. You book. We look for interpreters, nearest first. If someone local can cover it, there is nothing to discuss and nothing to pay. If nobody can, we come back to you with a figure before we confirm.

3. What counts as within reasonable reach

We absorb ordinary distances. As a working rule, an assignment an interpreter can reach in about an hour is a normal journey and is covered by the fee. That is most bookings, in most of the country, most of the time.

This is really a question about rural and remote work. If your assignment is somewhere the profession is thin on the ground - a coastal town, an island, a rural county with few registered interpreters - then somebody may have to travel a long way to reach you, and that is the case where a separate quote arises.

It can also arise for a very early start, where the only way to be in the room on time is to travel the night before. That is dealt with under accommodation in ISL-LEG-B10.

4. The rate

Where travel is charged, it is charged as mileage at 45p a mile. That is the HMRC approved mileage rate for the first 10,000 business miles in a car, and we use it because it is a published, recognised figure rather than one we invented.

Mileage is calculated on the round trip from the interpreter's base to the assignment. Where public transport is the sensible route, we charge the actual fare instead, at cost, and say so in the quote.

Travel time is not charged. Only the distance is. An interpreter who spends three hours getting to you is paid for the assignment, not for the journey.

VAT applies at the prevailing rate.

5. When it is agreed, and when it is not

Any travel charge is agreed with you in writing before we confirm the booking. If you do not accept it, the booking does not proceed and you owe nothing.

We do not add travel afterwards. If we quoted no travel and the interpreter turns out to have driven further than we expected, that is our problem, not your invoice.

The one exception is a cancellation. Where you cancel with no notice and the interpreter has already travelled or committed to non-refundable transport, that cost is recoverable - it is in the no-show line of the Cancellation and No-Show Schedule (ISL-LEG-F-I). Evidence is provided, and we mitigate where we can by redeploying the interpreter.

6. What we do to keep it at nil

• we search nearest-first, always

• where an interpreter is already working near you that day, we try to chain the assignments so no additional journey arises

• for a pair, we look for two interpreters in the same region rather than pairing across the country

• where the work could sensibly be done online, we will say so - it removes the question entirely, and the interpreting fee is identical

7. Online bookings

This document does not apply to online bookings. There is no journey, so there is nothing to charge. See ISL-LEG-B08.

Cross-references: ISL-LEG-B01 · ISL-LEG-B07 Face-to-Face Interpreting · ISL-LEG-B08 Online Interpreting · ISL-LEG-B10 Expenses at Cost · ISL-LEG-F-I Cancellation and No-Show Schedule

InSignLanguage Ltd · 26 Domum Road, Portsmouth PO2 0QZ · Company number 10943637 · VAT registration number GB 298 6629 31 · ICO registration ZC163713