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Working Time Policy and Records Pack
Move from an explanation of the limits to an editable policy and evidence pack.
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Two rulebooks, one driver: where RT(WTD) fits
Professional drivers work under two parallel sets of limits. The EU drivers' hours rules cap driving time and set rest requirements, and they get most of the attention because the tachograph enforces them. The road transport working time regulations of 2005, usually shortened to RT(WTD), cap total working time, and they are the working time rules drivers and transport managers most often misunderstand.
The distinction matters because the two systems count different things. Drivers' hours care about driving; RT(WTD) cares about all work: driving, loading, walkaround checks, paperwork, cleaning the vehicle, anything done for the employer. In our experience of DVSA desk based assessments, operators who manage tachograph data carefully can still be exposed on working time, because nobody in the business ever took ownership of it.
The weekly limits: 48 average, 60 maximum
The core working time rules drivers under RT(WTD) must observe are simple to state. Working time must average no more than 48 hours per week across the reference period, which is normally 17 weeks but can be extended to 26 by a collective or workforce agreement. In any single week, working time must not exceed 60 hours, however low the average is.
The traps live in the definitions. Working time excludes breaks, rest and genuine periods of availability, but a period only counts as availability if the driver knows about it in advance and its expected duration: sitting in a queue at an RDC that was sprung on the driver that morning is a grey area operators get wrong constantly. Holidays and sickness are not free hours either: statutory annual leave and sick absence count toward the average using notional fixed hours. A planner who fills every week to 60 on the theory that leave weeks pull the average down is usually building an infringement.
The opt-out myth
The most persistent misunderstanding we meet, in drivers' rooms and in transport offices, is the 48 hour opt-out. Office staff, warehouse operatives and most other workers can sign an opt-out from the 48 hour average under the general Working Time Regulations. Mobile workers in scope of RT(WTD) cannot. There is no opt-out from the working time rules drivers of in-scope vehicles are subject to, and any signed waiver a driver has been given is legally worthless for these limits.
We still find opt-out forms in driver files at new client audits, sometimes inserted by well meaning HR teams applying the standard staff pack to drivers. It is worth purging these, because producing one at a DVSA visit advertises that the business has misunderstood the framework. The honest position is less flexible but perfectly workable: plan to the 48 hour average, use the reference period intelligently, and treat 60 as a hard weekly ceiling rather than a target.
Night work and breaks
RT(WTD) adds a night work limit that surprises many planners: if any of the work is performed during the night period (midnight to 04:00 for goods vehicles), working time on that shift must not exceed 10 hours in the 24 hour period, unless a collective or workforce agreement lifts the limit. A trunk driver starting at 03:30 is a night worker for that shift, and a 12 hour duty is over the limit without an agreement in place. If your operation genuinely needs longer night shifts, the agreement route is available and we help operators put it in place properly, with real consultation rather than a signature round.
The break rules are another of the working time rules drivers tend to assume the tachograph covers, and it does not. A driver may not work more than six hours without a break; total break time must be at least 30 minutes if the working day is between six and nine hours, and at least 45 minutes beyond nine hours, taken in periods of at least 15 minutes. The 45 minute driving break usually satisfies this in practice, but not always: a driver doing four hours of yard work before driving can breach the six hour rule without ever touching the driving limits.
How the working time rules interact with drivers' hours
Because both rulebooks apply at once, the tighter rule always wins on the day. Daily and weekly rest come from the drivers' hours rules; total hours and night limits come from RT(WTD); breaks must satisfy both. A shift can be perfectly legal on the tachograph and still breach working time, which is why the working time rules drivers follow cannot be managed by tachograph analysis alone.
The practical answer is to run both datasets through the same analysis. Modern tachograph analysis packages calculate RT(WTD) alongside drivers' hours if you feed them the non-driving work records, particularly for drivers who also work in the warehouse or wash bay. That second job data is the piece most operators never capture. If a driver does four hours picking on a Saturday, that time counts, and only the operator's own records will ever show it.
Records, ownership and the driver handbook
Working time records must be kept for at least two years, which is longer than the 12 month tachograph horizon, and they need to show working time, availability, breaks and the running average per driver across the reference period. DVSA can and does ask for them, most often during a desk based assessment or after roadside encounters suggest a fatigue problem.
Ownership is the real fix. Somebody in the business needs to be named as responsible for monitoring the working time rules drivers are subject to, reviewing the averages monthly, and intervening before a driver runs out of headroom rather than after. We write that ownership, the limits, and the driver's own duties (declaring other paid work, taking breaks honestly, recording other work correctly on the tachograph) into the driver handbook, so every driver has signed for the rules that protect them. Fatigue is the safety case behind all of this, and a Traffic Commissioner will always ask what the operator did to manage it.
