Motor Mileage Allowance

What MMA is

Motor Mileage Allowance helps with the cost of authorised duty journeys made in your own vehicle. It’s a pence-per-mile rate designed to cover running costs, and it’s tax-free.

MMA is for duty travel — going on a course, attending a meeting at another unit, moving on assignment. Your daily commute is a different allowance: Home to Duty Travel.

When you can use your own vehicle

All Service personnel can claim, including reservists (and Sponsored Reserves when the MOD is meeting their costs), as long as they’ve been authorised to use their own vehicle. Before you set off you need:

• A completed and authorised FMT 1000 for using a privately owned vehicle on MOD business.
• Insurance that covers business use, plus valid road tax and MOT, all in date on the day of the journey.

Typical situations where private vehicle use is allowed include when there’s no spare seat in a Service vehicle already going your way and driving is reasonable, journeys within unit boundaries your CO authorises, changes of duty station, and temporary duty, attachments and courses. Journeys must start from your duty station or alternative work address.

How much you get

Rates didn’t change from April 2025. Mileage is rounded to the nearest whole mile. Which rate applies depends on the authority for your journey — the 75% rates only apply in specific circumstances set out in Chapter 6, so check before you travel.

On top of mileage you can be repaid reasonable costs you necessarily incur: parking, tolls, inland ferries, parking meters, the congestion charge, and garage costs if you’re held up overnight.

Worked examples

MMA, HDT or GYH(T)?

Using your own car can bring three different allowances into play, depending on why you’re driving:

• Motor Mileage Allowance — authorised duty journeys: courses, meetings, temporary duty, moving on assignment.
• Home to Duty Travel — your regular commute between home and your duty station, with a personal contribution taken off.
• Get You Home (Travel) — going home at weekends from a duty station more than 50 miles away, paid as a flat daily rate.

If a duty journey starts or ends at your home and you’re on automatic HDT, your MMA claim is reduced by the daily HDT rate so the same miles aren’t paid twice.

Using MMA when you move

MMA is payable for the drive when you change duty station within the UK, within an overseas theatre, or between the UK and North-West Europe. If you and your recognised partner each own a car, MMA can be paid for both vehicles on assignment journeys within the UK and within overseas theatres.

If your car has to be driven on one leg of a journey by someone else — for example dropping you at an airport and bringing the car back — special “double journey” rules can apply. Check with unit HR before you travel.

Rules worth knowing

• Passengers only count if their travel would otherwise have been paid from public funds, and there’s no passenger rate on vehicles built for one person, like a solo motorbike.
• Borrowed or hired cars qualify if you drive yourself, you paid for the hire, and the insurance meets the business-use rules.
• If you get automatic HDT and a duty journey starts or ends at your home, your MMA claim is reduced by your daily HDT rate, so you’re not paid twice.
• Keep your paperwork. Hold a copy of your authorised FMT 1000 and insurance for 24 months — they can be checked in an audit.

How to claim

1. Get authority for the journey and make sure your FMT 1000 and insurance are in order before you travel.
2. Claim through JPA Expenses after the journey, adding passengers, equipment and receipted extras like parking.
3. Without JPA access, use the paper JPA form through unit HR.