Chelmsford YHA Group

Budgets and Estimates for Hostelling Trips

Food Costs

The usual budget for meals is:

• Breakfast       £1.50
• Lunch              £1.50
• Dinner             £3.00

Normally catering on a weekend trip will include 2 breakfasts, 2 lunches, and Saturday evening meal; i.e. approx £6 per person.

Sometimes of course there may be plans to do something special, but the intention is to let participants know in advance if catering is going to be more expensive than usual.

If anyone has special dietary requirements, or wants to opt out of any of the group meals, they need to let the organiser know in advance, otherwise they may have to pay for unwanted meals.

Fuel Costs

The Group aims to encourage lift-sharing to reduce the cost for our members and reduce the environmental impact of our trips.

Fuel contributions for those sharing lifts are calculated as follows:

Use a fuel consumption figure of 0.13 litres per mile (which is approx 35 mpg).

Multiply this by the cheapest price of petrol available in Chelmsford (according to petrolprices.com) to get a cost in pence per mile.

If there are more than 2 people in the car (including driver), add 2p per additional passenger.

Then divide by the number of people in the car to get a price per mile per person.

For example, if we say petrol costs 123p a litre and there are 2 people in the car, the driver will get 16p per mile, and the driver and passenger each contribute 8p per mile.

Or if there are 3 people in the car, it comes to 18p per mile, and each pay 6p per mile.

Or for 4 people in the car, total is 20p per mile, and each pay 5p per mile.

If there are a number of cars all doing basically the same journey at roughly the same time, usually we will take the average number of people per car rather than keep track of exactly who was in which car when.

(Note that the same rate is paid regardless of type of car or type of fuel used)

To estimate the mileage, use the distance of the quickest route according to maps.google.com, and add 5% plus 20 miles.  Usually the driver will be offered payment based on the estimated mileage, unless they wish to provide a more accurate recorded mileage.

If a driver does significant additional mileage whilst away (e.g sightseeing tours), it’s up to them to ask for additional payment from passengers.

Note: A trip organiser will usually assist in co-ordinating lift-sharing, and for convenience and transparency, monies owing will usually be settled via the group’s account.  However, transport sharing arrangements made are deemed to be between individuals, and it is the responsibility of the individual participant to satisfy him or herself that the driver has appropriate insurance cover.