Car insurance – should you be covered for commuting or business if you use your car to get to work?

You can’t drive to work unless you have a commuting or business use add-on as part of your car insurance policy. For most basic car insurance policies, the base option is the “social, domestic and pleasure” policy. This is fine, if you’re only driving to the shops or to see friends. 

But, as soon as you want to use your car for work purposes, your car insurance needs an update. And the exact policy add-on you need varies depending on how you plan to actually use your car.  

As much as it can be a bit confusing working it all out, one thing’s clear. If you use your car to get to work, even if it’s just the one time a month when the trains are cancelled, you should be covered for commuting. Not having the commuting add-on on your policy can have pretty dire consequences if you’re pulled over, so it’s not worth the hassle.  

What is the difference between commuting vs. business use? 

While both types of cover relate to using your car for work, commuting and business use insure very different things. The simplest way to think of it is: 

• Commuting means getting yourself to and from your normal workplace. 

• Business use means using your car as part of your job beyond a straightforward commute. 

Standard commuting covers things like travelling to and from your main place of work. Or, even travelling to the train station to then get the train to your main place of work.  

For extras, like travelling to different sites or offices, driving to training days, conferences or work events, or visiting clients, you’ll typically need the business use add-on. And, depending on the amount of travel you do for work, a simple business add-on might not cut it.  

Do I need a business policy if I visit another office location occasionally?  

Typically, a commuting policy covers you for travel to and from your permanent place of work. Some insurers will also cover you if you split your time before two offices (but call and check if this is the case before you assume).  

However, if you’re travelling to different sites occasionally, you might need a class 1 business insurance policy. This covers you for short trips to various sites.  

What type of business policy do I need if I visit lots of different clients and locations every day?      

If you're regularly on the road for work, meeting clients, driving between different sites, or making multiple stops in a day, you’ll usually need a higher level of business cover than Class 1. 

Class 2 and Class 3 business use policies offer broader protection: 

• Class 2 generally covers the policyholder and an additional named driver who uses the car for work. 

• Class 3 is the most comprehensive and is typically aimed at people who drive extensively for work, such as sales reps who rack up mileage visiting lots of different customers. 

If your job involves lots of travel and the destinations vary day to day, insurers tend to err on the side of Class 3. It’s always worth checking directly, because the type of cover you need depends on how often you travel, the distance, and the nature of your work trips. 

Bear in mind, Class 3 won’t cover you if you’re a taxi or delivery driver. If your vehicle is directly tied to you being able to do your work in this sense, you’ll typically need to look at commercial insurance instead.  

How much does it cost to add commuting to your car insurance policy?  

We ran a few quotes to see how much it’d cost to add commuting to your car insurance policy. For a few of the scenarios we ran, there was absolutely no difference between the ordinary social-only policy and the commuting add-on.  

In other cases, when we ran the quote for less experienced drivers, the difference was negligible; around £5 to £20 per year, which works out to less than £2 per month extra to get the correct cover.  

How much does it cost to add business use to your car insurance policy?  

Class 1 business use generally covers use for commuting and short trips to other sites, which will cover most workers. We ran a few quotes to see how much this add-on would cost. And, like with our commuting example, we found the difference in price was negligible.  

Even when we ran the quotes for less experienced drivers, the business use add-on cost an extra £20 to £30 per year. That’s roughly an extra £2.50 added to your policy each month.  

Your quotes may vary. Insurance premiums are worked out on the basis of loads of different factors, so you’ll have to use comparison sites to run your own quotes and see what the differences are for your specific circumstances.  

What happens if I have the wrong policy?  

Driving with the wrong policy can be as bad as not being insured at all. For example, if you don’t have commuting added to your car insurance policy, and you get pulled over driving to work, you could end up with six points on your licence as well as a fine.  

It counts as driving without insurance, despite it often being a simple oversight. The consequences can be significant too. It can be significantly harder to get car insurance in future.  

Given the small difference in cost, for most people, being underinsured is just a matter of misunderstanding the small print rather than trying to cheat the system.