Drivers’ hours limit time behind the wheel. The Road Transport Working Time Regulations separately limit total work, and you can break these rules without ever exceeding your driving hours.
Driving, loading and unloading, cleaning and maintenance, paperwork, and waiting where the duration is not known in advance. Breaks and periods of availability (such as waiting where the foreseeable duration is known in advance, or riding as a second driver) are not working time.
Employers must keep working time records for at least two years. Tachograph data is the usual evidence, so keep your download and analysis routines tight.
A driver can comply with the 9-hour driving limit and still breach working-time law. Road transport working time counts not only driving but other activity at the employer’s disposal: loading and unloading, cleaning, maintenance, passenger or goods safety tasks, and administration related to the transport operation. The relevant daily and weekly drivers’ hours rules run alongside it, not instead of it.
Two periods often need careful classification. Breaks are not working time because the driver is not doing work and can use the period to recover. Periods of availability (POA) also generally do not count as working time, but their likely duration must be known in advance and the driver must not be doing other work. A queue whose length is unknown is not made POA by pressing a tachograph button. A second driver sitting in the passenger seat may record availability while the other drives, provided the conditions are met.
This matters for payslips and scheduling as well as compliance. An eight-hour driving day can include two hours of loading and a one-hour hold at a depot. Whether that hold was known availability or ordinary work affects the working-time total. Record what actually happened and why it was classified that way.
For mobile workers covered by the Road Transport (Working Time) Regulations 2005, weekly working time must not average more than 48 hours over a reference period. The normal reference period is 17 weeks; a collective or workforce agreement can extend it to 26 weeks. No individual can simply sign away this average limit under the 2005 Regulations. A single week may reach 60 hours, but only if the average across the reference period remains within 48.
A five-week run at 60 hours does not make the rest of the period disappear. The transport office needs a running calculation, not a look-back once the period ends. If a seasonal peak is foreseeable, plan the quieter weeks as part of the same reference period. Agency and part-time drivers can have work elsewhere; take reasonable steps to gather the relevant information and avoid a rota that counts only hours worked for you.
For goods vehicles, the night period in this regime is 00:00 to 04:00. If a mobile worker does night work, total working time cannot normally exceed 10 hours in any 24-hour period. A collective or workforce agreement can allow a longer limit; do not assume the mere existence of a workplace policy counts as such an agreement. This is a working-time cap, not a 10-hour driving entitlement. Loading before a night trunk and unloading after it both matter.
A shift from 20:00 to 08:00 is not automatically 12 hours of working time: qualifying breaks and POA are excluded. Equally, the fact that the vehicle stood still for two hours does not make the shift legal if the driver was securing the load or waiting without a known availability period. Keep a timeline of actual activity and compare it with the limit, then check drivers’ hours rest separately.
Under the 2005 Regulations a mobile worker must not work more than six hours without a break. For working time between six and nine hours, breaks must total at least 30 minutes. For more than nine hours they must total at least 45 minutes. Individual breaks should be at least 15 minutes. These requirements can overlap with the drivers’ hours 45-minute break, but they do not always line up: a driver can spend four hours loading before starting the vehicle, so the working-time break may be due before the driving break.
That is why a route plan should track both clocks. Put the pre-departure check, loading and paperwork into the working-time picture. A day with five hours of driving and five hours of loading cannot be assessed from tachograph driving time alone. Train dispatchers to see the “other work” mode as a constraint, not as unlimited free time.
The sector-specific 2005 Regulations apply to mobile workers within the assimilated or AETR drivers’ hours framework, with separate treatment for occasional mobile workers. Self-employed drivers were brought within the 2005 Regulations in GB and have responsibility for keeping their own working-time records. Drivers who operate only under GB domestic drivers’ hours rules usually fall under the broader Working Time Regulations 1998 instead. That framework has different opt-out and rest provisions. Do not copy a policy written for EU-style HGV work onto domestic-rule vehicles without checking this distinction.
Employers must keep working-time records for two years after the period concerned, even for staff who generally sit comfortably below the 48-hour average. Make sure data from tachographs, timesheets and loading records can be reconciled. An agency can have its own record-keeping duty where it pays the worker, but the operator still needs enough information to manage its lawful schedules. The official DVSA working-time annex gives the detailed definitions and occasional-worker test.
Each month, sample a few busy shifts rather than only easy ones. Check the actual start and finish times, driving, other work, POA and breaks; recalculate the working-time total. Then test the 10-hour night cap if any work occurred between midnight and 04:00, and look at the reference-period average. If a problem appears, ask whether the classification was wrong, the route was unrealistic or the shift design was impossible. Changing the plan is more useful than collecting another signed infringement sheet.
This article summarises the GB sector-specific rules as checked against DVSA guidance in September 2026. A driver’s exact working-time regime can depend on the vehicle and how often they do in-scope work, so consult the official annex for borderline cases.