Summary of the IBT Settlement

The In-Between Travel Settlement (IBT) sets out how employees will be compensated for travel spent between seeing clients. The legislation sets out the detail needed to put that into effect – including the mileage rate, qualifying distance, qualifying time and maximum travel distance.

It is for Home and Community Support workers who provide services:

• funded by Te Whatu Ora (previously the Ministry of Health or a DHB)
• that are carried out in a client's home to help them continue to live in their own home
• funded by ACC to support a client's rehabilitation from an injury covered by the ACC Act and to achieve and sustain the client’s maximum level of participation in everyday life.

The Settlement Agreement was signed in November 2014. It includes a Variation made in August 2015 and a second variation made in October 2016.

• Settlement Agreement (Word 93 KB)
• Settlement Agreement (PDF 244 KB)

Variations to the Settlement Agreement

• Variation to Settlement Agreement – August 2015 (Word 14 KB)
• Variation to Settlement Agreement – August 2015 (PDF 13 KB)
• Variation to Settlement Agreement – October 2016 (Word 30 KB)
• Variation to Settlement Agreement – October 2016 (PDF 1 MB)

Between October 2014 and March 2015 support workers were given the opportunity to vote on the In-Between Travel Agreement settlement which was negotiated between providers, unions, funders and government.

The result of the vote was to pay support workers the following:

• a new travel time payment to cover travel between clients effective from 1 July 2015
• a new national minimum mileage rate of 50 cents per km effective from 1 March 2016 which was increased to to 58.5 cents per km on 24 August 2020.

Note: The the minimum mileage rate was raised to 63.5 cents per km on the 15th March, 2022.

Parts of the agreement

Part A of the 2014 In-Between Travel Settlement means that home and community support workers can be paid for travel between clients. This is known as 'In-Between Travel (IBT)'.

Part B of the Settlement covers 'regularisation' of the home and community support workforce and future models of care. An aspect of regularisation is guaranteed hours (including costs of client cancelled visits). This is covered in the second Variation.

The obligations of providers under Part A of the Settlement are now included in the Home and Community Support (Payment for Travel Between Clients) Settlement Act 2016.

Part 6 of the Employment Relations Act 2000 (as amended by the Employment Relations Amendment Act 2016) inserted new provisions relating to ‘zero-hour’ contracts.

Sections 67A to 67H impose obligations on employers. Those obligations have some relevance to guaranteed hours.

A specific email account has been set up for enquiries at ibt@health.govt.nz which is cleared and responded to regularly.