Get You Home (Travel)

What Get You Home (Travel) is

Serving often means living away from the place you call home. Get You Home (Travel), usually shortened to GYH(T), exists to soften that. It’s a contribution towards the cost of travelling between your duty station and your qualifying residence (QRes) — the home you’d live in if the Services didn’t need you elsewhere — when you go back at weekends, during stand-down and on leave.

It isn’t a refund of what you actually spend. Instead, the MOD pays a fixed daily rate based on how far away your home is. Behind the scenes the rate is worked out to cover roughly 24 return journeys a year, then spread across every day so it arrives as a steady monthly amount in your pay. It’s also tax-free.

Who can claim

Most personnel can claim, as long as all of these are true:

• Your home is more than 50 miles from your duty station. Distance is the single-journey mileage by the most direct road route.
• Your duties let you get home at weekends and normal stand-down — and you actually make those journeys.
• Your home counts as a qualifying residence. That means your family home, a privately maintained property, or your Residence at Work Address (which can include single living accommodation at your permanent duty station). It normally has to be in the same country as your duty station.
• You can prove it. For a UK home you need a mortgage document, Land Registry entry, ground rent or tenancy agreement, plus a supporting document such as a council tax bill in your name at that address. Overseas properties need two documents from the approved lists.

There’s a narrow exception to the 50-mile rule. If your home is closer than 50 miles but your duties, or a commute of more than 90 minutes by every realistic route, stop you travelling in daily, the PACCC can exceptionally approve GYH(T). You’d apply through unit HR with the evidence.

For GYH(T) purposes, Great Britain, Northern Ireland and North-West Europe are treated as separate theatres. People serving in Great Britain whose qualifying home is in Northern Ireland or the Republic of Ireland are covered too.

Who can’t claim

You won’t get GYH(T) if any of these apply:

• You’re receiving Longer Separation Allowance for the same period, or Home to Duty Travel from private accommodation.
• You live in your own or a rented home at your duty station, or you’re accompanied in SFA (including surplus SFA) there.
• You travel daily from your qualifying home to work, or your duty station is within 50 miles and daily travel is possible.
• Your duties stop you getting home at weekends — in that case Longer Separation Allowance normally applies instead.
• You’re in an “on the road” post and have chosen to claim LSA.
• You’re authorised to use Service transport, including a contract hire vehicle, to get home regularly.
• Your ship is alongside in a UK port other than its base port for less than 15 days.

How much you get

Your rate depends on the one-way distance from your duty station to your home. HR enters your actual mileage on JPA and it’s rounded to the nearest 10 miles: 50 to 54 miles counts as 50, while 55 to 60 counts as 60.

The full table runs in 10-mile steps from 20 to 840 miles. The rates did not change between April 2025 and April 2026. Yearly figures assume the rate is paid every day of the year.

If your journey home involves a sea crossing — to Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands or a Scottish island, for example — an assumed “over the water” mileage for that crossing is added to your road distance, which can move you into a higher band.

Worked examples

GYH(T), HDT or LSA — which one applies?

These three are easy to mix up, and you can usually only have one at a time for the same period:

• Home to Duty Travel is for commuting — travelling between home and work most days.
• Get You Home (Travel) is for living near work during the week and going home at weekends, because home is more than 50 miles away.
• Longer Separation Allowance is for when duty stops you getting home at all, such as operations, sea time or long detachments where you can’t get back at weekends.

If your situation changes — say a detachment means you can no longer get home at weekends — tell unit HR so the right allowance is switched on.

What keeps it going — and what stops it

Once you’re entitled, GYH(T) keeps being paid through sick leave at your duty station, up to 6 days in hospital, up to 9 days of sick leave at your qualifying home, and temporary duty of up to 9 days elsewhere.

It stops for any period of sick absence of 10 days or more away from your duty station — and that stop is backdated to the first day. It also stops whenever your pay isn’t in issue. The absence matrix in JSP 752 Chapter 2 Section 3 sets out the effect of every other type of absence.

How to claim

1. Tell unit HR when you arrive, or when your circumstances change. GYH(T) is set up through the JPA Arrivals Process.
2. Provide your proof of residence: a mortgage, Land Registry, ground rent or tenancy document, plus a supporting document such as a council tax bill in your name at that address.
3. HR records your actual single-journey mileage, rounded to the nearest 10 miles, and payment starts with your salary, monthly in arrears.

Keep your documents up to date. If you move, change relationship status or start claiming something like HDT, tell HR straight away — overpayments are recovered.

Common mistakes

• Claiming for a home you don’t go back to. GYH(T) is for a home you actually return to regularly. If you stop travelling, your entitlement goes too.
• Running it alongside LSA. You can’t be paid both for the same period. If a detachment stops you getting home, LSA usually takes over.
• Forgetting long sick absences. Ten days or more away from your duty station stops GYH(T) from day one.