What Is Digs Money — and How Do Contractors Actually Use It?

16 September 2026

If you’ve spent any time working on sites away from home, you’ve heard the term. Digs money. Bed money. Lodging allowance. Whatever the foreman calls it on your contract, it all means the same thing: the contribution your employer makes towards the cost of sleeping somewhere that isn’t your own house.

It’s one of those things everyone receives and almost nobody fully understands. This is a plain-English breakdown.

What digs money actually is

Digs money is an informal term for the overnight accommodation allowance paid to workers who need to stay away from home for work. It’s not a formal HMRC category in itself — it’s the everyday name for what HMRC calls “expenses for employees working away from home.”

Employers can pay this either:

• As a reimbursement — you book and pay for your own accommodation, submit receipts, and get the money back
• As a flat allowance — a fixed daily or weekly sum added to your pay or expenses, regardless of what you actually spend
• By booking it directly — the company arranges and pays for accommodation centrally

The amount varies by employer and contract, but for construction and civil engineering work in the UK, a common range is £30–£60/night as a lodging allowance on top of base pay. Some longer-term contracts negotiate a fixed weekly digs rate built into the package.

What HMRC says about it

From HMRC’s perspective, accommodation costs for employees working temporarily away from their normal place of work are an allowable business expense — which means your employer can reimburse you without it counting as taxable income, provided:

• The stay is temporary (not a permanent relocation)
• The work location is not your regular place of work
• The costs are reasonable and evidenced

HMRC publishes benchmark scale rates for subsistence (food and drink) but does not set a fixed benchmark for accommodation — actual reasonable costs are reimbursable. If you’re self-employed, accommodation costs incurred wholly and exclusively for your work are deductible against your income.

Important: tax rules change, and individual circumstances vary. Always check the current HMRC guidance at gov.uk or speak to your accountant about what applies to your specific situation.

How it plays out in practice

The reality on most construction and infrastructure projects is fairly straightforward. You’re booked on a contract that’s 2, 3, 6 months away from home. You need somewhere decent to sleep, cook, shower, decompress after a 10-hour day on site.

The options most contractors end up in:

Pub rooms / B&Bs. Quick to book, but expensive for more than a week or two, no kitchen, nowhere to store kit, and you’re eating out every meal. Fine for a week. Soul-destroying for six months.

Budget hotels. Same problem. No kitchen, expensive at real rates, and if you’re booking last minute around a busy project, rates spike.

Short-term lets / serviced accommodation. Increasingly the preferred option for longer contracts — you get a full house or flat, proper kitchen, parking, laundry, and a space that actually feels liveable. For projects where the whole team is in one place, it’s often more cost-effective for the employer to block-book a whole property than to pay individual hotel rates.

What to look for when you’re self-booking

If your digs money comes as a cash allowance and you’re sorting your own accommodation, these are the things that actually matter on a long contract:

Kitchen. Non-negotiable if you’re there more than two weeks. Eating out every meal destroys your allowance and your health.

Parking. If you’re driving to site every day, parking that isn’t a faff matters more than the view.

Fast WiFi. You’re working long days. Evenings are for calling home, watching something, winding down. Slow broadband makes that miserable.

Flexible terms. Contracts shift. Projects overrun or get pulled forward. Lock yourself into a rigid booking and you’re losing money when dates change.

Proximity to site. Self-evident, but worth checking properly — “10 minutes from Bedford town centre” could mean 40 minutes from where you’re actually working.

Price per night at long-stay rates. Most accommodation is cheaper the longer you stay. Ask about weekly or monthly rates rather than accepting the nightly headline figure.

Bedford specifically

Bedford has become one of the more active contractor accommodation markets in the UK, driven by several large-scale infrastructure projects running concurrently — rail, utilities, and the Universal United Kingdom Resort development that begins construction in 2026 and runs through to the early 2030s.

That’s a sustained influx of site workers needing accommodation across a multi-year window, which means the market is tightening. If you’re booking for a Bedford project, don’t leave it late.