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Exempt from tachograph rules rarely means no records. What GB domestic drivers’ hours rules require, and how to prove your exemption to DVSA.
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Being exempt from the assimilated drivers’ hours and tachograph rules almost never means you keep no records. Most exempt goods-vehicle work falls straight into the GB domestic drivers’ hours rules, which carry their own driving and duty limits and - for most operator-licensed work - their own written record requirement. On top of that, the burden of proving an exemption applies sits with you, not with the examiner at the roadside.
So in practice “exempt” means recorded differently, and ready to be justified - not “unrecorded”. This article explains what you must record under GB domestic rules, when a written record is legally required, how passenger work differs, what evidence to keep so an exemption stands up, and how to keep the whole thing straight across a mixed week.
“Exempt” is a heavily used phrase in everyday yard talk, so it pays to be precise. There are two separate things a vehicle can be exempt from, and they don’t always go together:
A note on wording: GOV.UK now calls these the assimilated rules. That is the same body of law previously called the “retained EU” or simply “EU” rules - the change is in the label, not the substance.
Here is the part that catches operators out. Falling outside the assimilated rules does not put you outside all rules. Most goods vehicles that are exempt drop into the GB domestic drivers’ hours rules (Part VI of the Transport Act 1968). The exemption changes which regime you sit under - it does not switch the clock off.
The instinct is to ask “do we need to use the tachograph for this job?” That is the wrong place to start. Work the questions in order:
The tachograph question comes after that, not before. Get the rule set right first and the recording question usually answers itself. Get it the wrong way round and you end up with a vehicle that is genuinely exempt from the tachograph but missing the GB domestic record it still needed.
This is a supporting article. For the wider grounding on operator licensing and how these regimes fit together, see The Operator’s Licence Explained: A Complete Guide.
A common and expensive mistake is treating a vehicle type, a customer type or a whole sector as automatically exempt. The law normally looks at what the vehicle is doing on the day: where it is going, what it is carrying, who benefits from the transport, and whether driving is the driver’s main activity.
The same vehicle can be exempt on Monday and fully in scope on Tuesday. A 7.5-tonne vehicle carrying tools and materials for a tradesperson’s own work may fit an exemption on a local job, but not when it is used as a delivery vehicle for hire or reward. A refuse vehicle may be exempt on a qualifying door-to-door household round, but not on a skip job, a trade-waste collection or a transfer-station run. And one in-scope job in a day pulls that whole day into the assimilated rules.
There is no universal “exemption certificate” that makes a vehicle exempt for every journey. You need to know exactly which exemption you are relying on, and keep enough evidence to show the day’s work matched its conditions - which is the subject of a later section.
If your vehicle is exempt from the assimilated rules and is being driven on a public road in connection with a trade or business, the GB domestic rules almost always apply. They run in England, Wales and Scotland; Northern Ireland has its own separate rules. The core limits are short:
“Driving” includes time at the controls on and off the public road. There is one important carve-out for these sectors: off-road driving for the purposes of agriculture, quarrying, forestry, building work or civil engineering counts as duty rather than driving - so manoeuvring a tipper around a site, for example, counts towards the 11-hour duty limit but not the 10-hour driving limit. It is duty, not invisible time.
A working day is the 24-hour period beginning when the driver starts duty. For an employed driver, duty is any working time; for a genuinely self-employed driver, duty is time driving the vehicle or doing other work on the vehicle or its load. Where a driver splits a day or week between goods and passenger vehicles under the domestic rules, the rules for whichever they spend most of their time driving apply for that day or week.
Front-load the test: if the vehicle requires an operator’s licence and the driver drives more than 4 hours on a given day, a written record of that day’s work is legally required. The trigger is narrower than many operators assume - it is not “every exempt journey” - but it catches the great majority of O-licensed HGV work in haulage, construction, waste and scaffolding.
If a driver does less than 4 hours’ driving on a day, the written-record requirement is not triggered for that day. Many operators keep a record anyway - it is the only practical way to prove the driving stayed under 4 hours if the question ever comes up.
This is where operators often guess. The periods are specific:
As a practical rule of thumb, keep the exemption evidence, the domestic record and the working-time record together for at least two years, so the whole decision trail survives as one.
You can use a compliant tachograph to record GB domestic work instead of a paper sheet. On a digital unit, out-of-scope driving is recorded as “other work” with the mode switch set to out-of-scope - the driver applies that designation at the start of the shift. This is written into the assimilated rules themselves: Article 6(5) of Regulation (EC) No 561/2006 requires a driver to record as other work any time spent driving a vehicle on commercial operations outside their scope.
Two practical points follow. Where you use the tachograph for legally required domestic records, all the normal rules on fitment and use apply. And where a tachograph is fitted to a vehicle on domestic work but is not being used for the legally required record, the operator and driver should still keep it calibrated and sealed - though it does not need recalibrating provided the seals stay intact and the vehicle stays out of scope of the assimilated rules.
Passenger-carrying vehicles have their own domestic rules, and the record position is not the same as for goods vehicles. For PSV work that sits outside the assimilated rules - for example, some short regular services - the GB domestic passenger rules may apply instead.
DVSA guidance is clear that there are no record-keeping requirements under the GB domestic rules for passenger-carrying vehicles. That does not mean PSV operators can ignore records. If a driver does any assimilated or AETR work on a day, they must still be able to produce the driver card, analogue charts or manual records required for that in-scope work. The practical control is the same as for goods operators: classify the service before dispatch, and make sure the driver’s records tell a complete story for the day and the relevant look-back period.
Many operators run mixed weeks - an in-scope tachograph job on Monday, exempt local work on Tuesday, yard or workshop duties on Wednesday. The mixture itself is fine. The problem is gaps.
Once a driver does any work in scope of the assimilated rules, the GOV.UK guidance on recording other work requires a full set of records - in-scope driving, out-of-scope commercial driving, other work, periods of availability, breaks and rest. So exempt driving that needed no tachograph record on its own may still have to be captured as “other work” once the same driver also does in-scope work in the period.
There is a sensible relaxation. For a fixed week (00:00 Monday to 24:00 Sunday) in which no in-scope driving takes place, DVSA accepts one or more block records covering the whole week rather than seven separate daily records, provided the weekly rest periods are identified. Where in-scope driving does occur, expect to keep the fuller record. Drivers must be able to produce the current day plus the look-back period of records.
Drivers running purely under GB domestic rules are not covered by the sector-specific Road Transport (Working Time) Regulations 2005 - those track the assimilated rules. Instead, four provisions of the general Working Time Regulations 1998 apply, and DVSA enforces them for domestic and occasional mobile workers.
In headline terms that means a 48-hour average working week, a right to paid annual leave, health checks for night workers, and - because the GB domestic rules set no breaks or rest of their own - a duty on the employer to ensure drivers get “adequate rest”. So even on a day where no drivers’-hours record is triggered, a working-time obligation can still be running underneath, and those records must be kept for two years.
An examiner does not start from the assumption that your vehicle is exempt. The default is that a goods vehicle over 3.5 tonnes is in scope and needs a tachograph; it is for you to show why a particular journey isn’t. Treat the exemption as something you evidence, not something you assert. The aim is not paperwork for its own sake - it is a consistent decision the transport office can apply every day and a transport manager, DVSA examiner or Traffic Commissioner can follow later.
There are two layers to it: a standing note for the recurring operation, and proof of the actual job on the day. A good standing note is worthless if the day’s job sheet contradicts it.
For regular exempt work, keep a short written note - in the compliance file, contract file or route pack - recording:
Alongside the standing note, keep evidence for the day itself:
Where a vehicle is exempt from the tachograph fitment requirement, complete the DVSA Declaration that the vehicle does not need a tachograph and give it to the tester at the annual test. It is an offence to make a declaration you know to be untrue, so the standing note above is also your own check that the exemption is real.
The principle is the same across construction, scaffolding, concrete, waste and passenger work - but the exemption that is in play (if any) differs, so it is worth being specific.
The exemption people reach for is the 100km “tradesmans” derogation: a vehicle or combination not over 7.5 tonnes carrying materials, equipment or machinery for the driver’s own use in the course of their work, used only within a 100km radius of base, where driving is not the driver’s main activity and the work is not for hire or reward. A small scaffold van running your own gear to your own sites can fit.
The catch: most scaffold wagons and tippers are over 7.5 tonnes, which puts them straight back in scope of the assimilated rules and the tachograph, whatever the distance. And even where a job is exempt, if the goods vehicle requires an operator’s licence and the driver exceeds 4 hours’ driving that day, a GB domestic weekly record is still required.
Two things matter. First, the off-road carve-out: time driving on site for building work or civil engineering counts as duty, not driving, under GB domestic rules. Second, the 100km exemption can cover vehicles up to 7.5t carrying your own materials and tools to site within the radius - but a 32-tonne tipper delivering aggregate for a customer is carriage of goods over 3.5 tonnes for reward, so it is in scope and needs a tachograph. “Own materials, within 100km, driving not the main job” is the test, a tipper rarely meets it.
Concrete is exemption-sensitive because the body can look specialised, but the work is goods carriage. A drum mixer over 3.5 tonnes delivering ready-mixed concrete to customers has no exemption to lean on - the 100km “tools of the trade” derogation doesn’t help, because the concrete is the customer’s product delivered for reward, not materials for the driver’s own use, and a mixer is over 7.5 tonnes in any case.
Volumetric concrete mixers (VCMs), sometimes called mobile concrete batching plants, are no longer treated as plant. Their exemptions from annual testing and operator licensing were removed in 2017 and 2018, and they are now goods vehicles in scope of operator licensing, drivers’ hours and tachographs; DfT has confirmed it is not changing that position. A temporary increased-weight arrangement for specified VCMs runs to 2028. So whether you run drum mixers, volumetric mixers or concrete pumps, plan for them as in-scope HGVs from the start.
There is a genuine derogation for door-to-door household refuse collection and disposal, but DVSA applies it narrowly - it is built around the household round itself, and the evidence should show the nature of the round and the local-authority or customer arrangement. Don’t stretch it. Skip work, trade and commercial waste, recycling transfers, depot-to-depot movements and transfer-station trunking generally fall outside it and stay in scope.
And where the household-collection exemption does apply, you are back to GB domestic rules and their record requirement, not free of records altogether.
Short regular services may sit outside the assimilated rules where the route conditions are met, while private hire, tours, excursions and many coach movements stay in scope. The question is never “am I a bus or coach business?” - it is which rule set applies to that service on that day. Where domestic passenger rules apply there is no GB domestic record-sheet requirement; where assimilated or AETR rules apply, the correct tachograph or manual records are still needed. (See the passenger-vehicle section above.)
The best process is a simple one used consistently, built into dispatch rather than just filed away:
This is a supporting article in the Exemptions category. For the broad grounding on operator licensing, see The Operator’s Licence Explained: A Complete Guide.
None of this is difficult once the records are set up properly - but keeping exempt, domestic and in-scope work straight across a mixed fleet is exactly where mistakes creep in, and an exemption you can show beats one you have to explain after the event. Proper tachograph analysis and infringement management takes that burden off the operator, which is the work Tacho Agent does.
This article is provided for general guidance only and reflects our understanding of the rules as they apply in Great Britain as at the date shown on this page. It is not legal advice and should not be relied on as a substitute for advice tailored to your specific operation.
Drivers' hours, tachograph, working time and operator licensing rules are detailed and change over time, and some requirements differ in Northern Ireland and for international journeys. Always check the current guidance on GOV.UK and the underlying legislation on legislation.gov.uk, and consult your transport manager or a qualified compliance professional before acting.
To the fullest extent permitted by law, Tacho Agent Ltd accepts no liability for any loss arising from action taken, or not taken, in reliance on this article. Nothing here excludes or limits any liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, including for death or personal injury caused by negligence or for fraud. Use of this article is also governed by our Terms of Use.
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