UK Drivers' Hours & Working Time Rules Explained

Every driver of a heavy goods vehicle in Great Britain is governed by two separate rulebooks at the same time — and they are not the same rules. The assimilated EU drivers' hours rules limit how long you can drive. The Road Transport (Working Time) Regulations 2005 limit how long you can work. You have to satisfy both on every shift, and because they count different things in different ways, it is entirely possible to stay inside one while breaching the other without noticing.

This guide explains both rulebooks in plain English, then works through the three things that most often catch drivers out: the two separate clocks, how reduced rest is counted, and the strict order of a split break. Every figure here is drawn from DVSA's published guidance on the assimilated drivers' hours rules and the working time rules for lorry, bus and coach crews — and you can test any scenario against your own shift with our free UK drivers' hours calculator, the interactive companion to this guide.

Two rulebooks running at once

The drivers' hours rules limit driving; the working time rules limit all work. They run on separate clocks, so a break that satisfies one may not satisfy the other, and you must meet both.

That single idea is the key to everything below. The two regimes overlap, but they measure different things:

• Drivers' hours (assimilated EU rules) count driving time — time actually at the wheel. They set the daily, weekly and fortnightly driving limits, the 45-minute break after 4½ hours of driving, and your daily and weekly rest.
• Working time (RT(WT)R 2005) counts working time — driving plus all other work: loading, unloading, checks, paperwork, helping with the load. It sets an average weekly ceiling, a separate break, and a night-work limit.

One period of your day can be counted differently by each rulebook. An hour spent loading is working time but not driving. A 30-minute pause can be a valid working-time break yet do nothing for your driving break if it falls in the wrong place. Understanding which clock is running is most of the battle — and it is why a tool that applies both at once is useful, rather than trying to hold two sets of arithmetic in your head.

The assimilated EU drivers' hours rules

These are the rules most HGV drivers think of as "the tacho rules". They apply to most goods vehicles over 3.5 tonnes and are recorded by your tachograph, which remains the legal record of your driving, breaks and rest. If you run vehicles under that weight, note that the scope line is moving for one specific kind of work — our guide to the van tachograph rules from 1 July 2026 sets out exactly which 2.5–3.5 tonne vans are caught and which are not.

Daily, weekly and fortnightly driving limits

• Daily driving: 9 hours. You may extend this to 10 hours, but only twice in a fixed week (a fixed week runs Monday 00:00 to Sunday 24:00). Driving beyond 10 hours in a day is never permitted.
• Weekly driving: 56 hours in a single fixed week.
• Fortnightly driving: 90 hours across any two consecutive fixed weeks. Because of this, a 56-hour week must be followed by a week of no more than 34 hours' driving.

These are driving limits — they say nothing about how much other work you do around the wheel, which is where the working time rules take over.

The 4½-hour driving break (and how to split it)

After no more than 4 hours 30 minutes of driving you must take a break of at least 45 minutes, unless you are starting a rest period. Taking the break resets your driving time, so you can begin accumulating another 4½ hours.

You may split that 45-minute break into two parts — but the order is fixed:

1. A first break of at least 15 minutes, then
2. A second break of at least 30 minutes.

DVSA's guidance is explicit: it must be "one break of at least 15 minutes followed by another break of at least 30 minutes". Taken the other way round — 30 minutes and then 15 — it does not satisfy the rule, and your driving time keeps counting as though you never broke at all. This trips up more drivers than almost any other single rule, and the calculator applies the exact 15-then-30 order so you can see when a split is valid.

Daily rest: 11 hours, reduced to 9

A regular daily rest is at least 11 continuous hours, taken within each 24-hour period. You have two ways to flex it:

• Reduced daily rest of at least 9 continuous hours, allowed no more than three times between any two weekly rest periods. The count resets after each weekly rest.
• Split daily rest, taken in two parts within the 24 hours: a first part of at least 3 hours followed by a second part of at least 9 hours — at least 12 hours in total. Taken this way it counts as a regular daily rest and does not use up one of your three reduced-rest allowances.

Because the daily rest is measured inside a 24-hour period, drivers often talk about a "15-hour rule" for how long a duty day can spread. It is worth knowing where that figure comes from and what it is not — is there a 15-hour rule for HGV drivers? works through the arithmetic.

Weekly rest, the 144-hour deadline and compensation

A regular weekly rest is at least 45 continuous hours. It can be reduced to at least 24 (but under 45) hours — but reductions have to be paid back.

Three parts of the weekly-rest rule catch people out:

• The 144-hour deadline. A new weekly rest must start no later than the end of six consecutive 24-hour periods — 144 hours — from the end of your last weekly rest. You cannot simply keep driving day after day because your daily rests look fine.
• The two-week rule. Across any two consecutive weeks you must take at least two weekly rests, of which at least one is a full regular (45-hour) rest. In other words, two regular rests, or one regular and one reduced — never two reduced in a row within the same pair of weeks.
• Compensation for a reduced week. If you reduce a weekly rest below 45 hours, the shortfall must be repaid as an equivalent period of rest, taken in one block, attached to another rest period of at least 9 hours, before the end of the third week following the week you reduced.

If that sounds like a lot to track by hand, it is — the ledger of reduced rests and repayment deadlines is exactly the kind of thing the drivers' hours calculator keeps for you.

The working time rules (RT(WT)R 2005)

The Road Transport (Working Time) Regulations 2005 sit alongside the drivers' hours rules for mobile workers. They are a different regime with a different unit of measurement — working time, which is driving plus all other work.

The 48-hour average and 60-hour ceiling

• 48 hours a week on average, measured over a reference period that is usually 17 weeks (it can be extended to 26 weeks by a workforce or collective agreement).
• 60 hours in any single week is the absolute ceiling — you can work up to 60 in one week only so long as the average stays within 48.

Note what counts here: this is working time, so a week of modest driving but heavy loading and waiting can push you toward these limits even when your driving hours look comfortable.

The working time break — a different break

You must not work more than 6 hours without a break. The amount depends on how long you work in total:

• Work 6 to 9 hours in the day → at least 30 minutes of break.
• Work more than 9 hours → at least 45 minutes of break.
• Each break must be at least 15 minutes long, but they can be taken in any order and any number of blocks.

This is not the same as the driving break, even though the numbers look similar — more on that in the confusions below.

Night work and periods of availability (POA)

• Night work. For goods vehicles, night time is 00:00 to 04:00. If any of your working time falls in that window, your working time is limited to 10 hours in that 24-hour period — unless a workforce or collective agreement is in place to lift it. (For passenger vehicles the night window is 01:00 to 05:00.)
• Periods of availability (POA). POA is waiting time whose length you know in advance — accompanying a vehicle on a ferry, or a booked wait at a loading bay. POA is not working time, but it is not a break or rest either. It is neutral: it does not add to your working time, and it does not count toward your breaks or rest.

Three things that catch drivers out

Almost every avoidable infringement traces back to one of these three misunderstandings.

1. Two separate clocks — a break isn't always a break

Because the driving break and the working-time break look similar (both involve 45 minutes, both involve 15-minute parts), drivers assume one covers the other. It doesn't. They are two separate legal limits and you must meet both.

• The driving break counts driving only, is triggered by 4½ hours at the wheel, and a split must be 15 minutes then 30 minutes, in that order.
• The working-time break counts driving plus other work, is triggered by 6 hours of total work, and can be split into any number of ≥15-minute blocks in any order.

It is genuinely possible to satisfy one while breaching the other. The specific combinations where that happens — including the case where one well-placed break legitimately covers both — are worked through in do I need a tacho break AND a working-time break?. The only reliable way to see both at once is to run the day through a tool that tracks both clocks — which is what the calculator does.

2. Counting reduced rest

There are two different "reduced rests", and conflating them causes real errors:

• A reduced daily rest (9 hours instead of 11) is one of three you may take between weekly rests. Miscount, and you take a fourth — an infringement.
• A reduced weekly rest (24–44 hours instead of 45) creates a compensation debt with a deadline: repaid in one block, attached to a rest of at least 9 hours, before the end of the third following week.

The two counts are separate. A split daily rest (3 + 9) does not spend a reduced-daily allowance at all, because it counts as a regular rest. Keeping these ledgers straight by memory across a fortnight is where paper falls down.

3. The split break must be in order

Worth stating on its own because it is so commonly got wrong: a split driving break is 15 minutes first, then 30 minutes. A 30-then-15 sequence is not a valid split, and the tachograph will keep counting your driving time as if no break was taken. If in doubt, take the full 45 minutes in one go — it always works.

What this guide doesn't cover

This guide and the calculator deal with the assimilated EU drivers' hours rules and the RT(WT)R working time rules — the regime that applies to most HGV work. For honesty and completeness, they do not cover:

• GB domestic rules, the separate, lighter regime that applies to certain vehicles and journeys not caught by the assimilated rules.
• Multi-manning, and the ferry or train derogations that adjust daily rest.
• Emergency relaxations occasionally issued by the Department for Transport.

And a point that matters: no calculator is the legal record of your hours. Your tachograph is — always follow it and your operator's instructions. Treat this guide as an explainer and the calculator as a planning aid, not as a substitute for either.

Check where you stand

Reading the rules is one thing; knowing whether today's shift is compliant is another. Put your driving, other work, breaks and rest into the free UK drivers' hours calculator and it applies every rule above — both clocks, the split-break order, the reduced-rest counts and the weekly-rest deadline — in your browser, with nothing you enter leaving your phone.

If the shift you want to check has already happened, the tachograph infringement checker is the companion tool: enter a few days of past activity and it lists each infringement the rules above would flag, with the legal reference against every one.

If you manage drivers rather than drive, the same rules sit behind a compliant operation. The daily walkaround check is where a driver's duty day begins, closed-loop defect management keeps roadworthiness evidenced, and the O-licence compliance hub ties the record-keeping duties together. For the roadworthiness side of a driver's day, our complete guide to DVSA daily walkaround checks is the companion to this one — hours at one end of the shift, the vehicle check at the other.