A charity that provides home care to dying patients is feeling the bite of rising fuel prices.
Nurses at the Iain Rennie Hospice at Home have been feeling the pinch since petrol prices began to soar earlier this year.
Hospice nurses use their own cars to visit patients and a nurse on call can travel up to 100 miles in one day.
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t HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) tax free allowance of 40p per mile has remained the same for many years and is now not sufficient to cover costs.
Chief executive at the Iain Rennie Hospice at Home Maddie Blackburn said: "We contacted them (HMRC] saying would they consider an increase because our whole service is dependent on our nurses being able to get to their patients at home but basically they said no."
Instead the hospice has bumped up the mileage allowance us its own funds to 47p per mile, to provide a net tax free benefit of 45p per mile.
Ms Blackburn said: "The 2p is to offset the tax payment that the individual (nurse] might have to pay. We don't want our nurses to incur any tax payments."
She added: "Our nurses have to be able to visit patients at their homes.
"The biggest priority is to support our nurses to do their work."
The charity, which provides free home care to patients around the clock in the Chilterns area of Herts and Bucks, will continue to lobby government organisations to reconsider the current HMRC allowances for nurses.
Ms Blackburn said: "Because all our work is conducted at patients' homes it affects us more than a bedded hospice unit."
She has also written to local MPs and Primary Care Trusts about the issue.
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