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Under GB domestic rules, goods vehicle drivers can drive up to 10 hours and be on duty up to 11 hours a day. How each limit works, plus key exemptions.
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Under the GB domestic drivers’ hours rules, a goods vehicle driver must not drive for more than 10 hours in a day, and must not be on duty for more than 11 hours in any working day. These two figures are the core of the domestic rules for goods vehicles.
They apply when your vehicle falls outside the assimilated (formerly EU) drivers’ hours rules, and they work differently from those rules. In particular, there is no fixed break or daily rest pattern attached. This guide explains what each limit covers, how a "day" is measured, the exemptions that change the picture, and how to evidence it all from your records.
Both limits sit in the Transport Act 1968, section 96 (as amended). For goods vehicle drivers, the rest of that section is stripped out by the Drivers’ Hours (Goods Vehicles) (Modifications) Order 1986, so in practice these two limits, plus a handful of exemptions, are the whole daily picture. Buses and coaches work differently again (covered below), so don’t apply the 11-hour duty limit to PSV work without checking the passenger rules.
GB domestic rules apply in Great Britain to many goods vehicle operations that sit outside the assimilated drivers’ hours rules, the rules many operators still call the "EU rules" or "561/2006". They do not apply in Northern Ireland, which has its own domestic rules, and they do not replace the national rules of another country when a driver is abroad.
In broad terms, the assimilated rules generally bite on goods vehicles (or vehicle-and-trailer combinations) over 3.5 tonnes, unless an exemption or derogation applies. Where the work falls outside those rules, GB domestic rules are usually the fall-back. Common examples include some light goods work, certain exempt HGV operations, and local work where the main assimilated regime does not apply. The exact answer depends on the vehicle, the journey, the load, who the transport is for, and whether any exemption carries strict distance or purpose conditions.
From 1 July 2026, the assimilated rules extend to goods carried in international transport or cabotage operations where the vehicle (including any trailer) exceeds 2.5 tonnes. The key point for this article: vehicles between 2.5 and 3.5 tonnes that operate only within the UK are not pulled into the assimilated rules by that change; they continue under GB domestic rules. It is international and cabotage work that triggers the new requirement, not the weight alone.
Working out which set of rules applies to a given vehicle and journey is a topic in its own right. This guide assumes you have already established that you are running under GB domestic rules. If you haven’t, start with the pillar guide "Drivers’ Hours Rules: A Complete Guide for UK Operators", and "Which rules apply: GB domestic vs assimilated rules".
Some drivers are not subject to the GB domestic rules at all. DVSA guidance lists:
Be careful with the "always off the public road" exemption. It covers drivers who never use the public road. Mixed site-and-road work, e.g. a tipper that runs on site but also drives on the public road between sites, is not outside the rules and needs proper assessment.
In any working day, a driver must not drive for more than 10 hours. This is a hard limit on time at the wheel, not on the length of the shift, which is governed separately by the duty limit below.
It is worth being clear about one common confusion: this flat 10-hour domestic limit is not the same as the assimilated daily driving limit, which is 9 hours, extendable to 10 hours no more than twice in a fixed week. Under GB domestic goods rules, the headline figure is simply 10 hours.
The day is measured as the 24-hour period beginning with the start of duty time. If a driver books on at 06:00, the domestic working day runs from 06:00 to 06:00 the next morning for this purpose, and the 10 hours of permitted driving sit inside that window.
Driving means being at the controls of the vehicle for the purpose of controlling its movement, whether the vehicle is moving or stationary with the engine running, even for a short period. Shunting around the yard with the engine on counts as driving. Sitting in the cab with the engine off, doing paperwork, does not.
The driving limit applies both on and off the public road, but there is an important carve-out: off-road driving in the course of agriculture, quarrying, forestry, building work or civil engineering counts as duty time, not driving time.
That matters most on site-based work. Manoeuvring a tipper around a construction site, or running on a quarry haul road, is duty: it counts towards the 11-hour duty limit, but not towards the 10-hour driving limit. The moment the vehicle is back on the public road, that driving counts again. The time is never simply ignored: if it isn’t driving, it is still work for the duty calculation.
In any working day, a driver must not be on duty for more than 11 hours. Duty covers the whole working day, not just time at the wheel, so for most operations the 11-hour limit is the one that bites first. The driving may be well under 10 hours, but the shift can still fail because the duty time is too high.
What "duty" covers depends on whether the driver is employed or an owner-driver.
That difference can be significant. An employee who spends the morning on warehouse duties and then drives in the afternoon may reach the 11-hour duty limit long before their driving hours are anywhere near 10.
In day-to-day fleet terms, duty usually includes:
Breaks and rest have to be recorded honestly. Calling a period a break does not make it one if the driver is still working, supervising the load, moving the vehicle when called, or otherwise not free from duty.
Take a driver who books on at 06:00 and works like this:
Driving totals 7 hours - comfortably inside the 10-hour limit, with plenty of headroom to spare.
Duty, on the other hand, is the whole 06:00–18:00 span (12 hours) minus the genuine breaks taken (45 minutes in total), giving 11 hours 15 minutes of duty.
The 11-hour duty limit has still been broken by 15 minutes, even though:
This is the trap: breaks reduce duty time, but they don't reset the clock on the working day. A driver can take all the legally appropriate breaks, log them correctly, stay well under the driving limit and still be in breach simply because the total span of the working day, even net of breaks, runs too long. Checking driving time and missing duty time is the classic failure mode; checking driving time, ticking off the breaks, and still missing duty time is the more dangerous variant, because the paperwork looks clean at first glance.
The 11-hour duty limit only applies on a day when the driver actually drives. On a working day with no driving at all e.g. a full day in the workshop or warehouse, for example, the duty limit does not apply. That does not turn the day into unregulated work: working time and health-and-safety obligations can still apply.
There is a second, frequently-missed exemption, though it's more forgiving than it first appears. Per DVSA guidance, a driver who drives for 4 hours or less on each day of the week is exempt from the daily duty limit for that whole week, and the underlying provision The Driver's Hours (Passenger and Goods Vehicles) (Modifications) Order 1971 Article 4 (7) actually allows the exemption to survive driving over 4 hours on up to two days in the week, provided certain conditions are met. The week runs from 00:00 Monday to 24:00 the following Sunday.
The key words are "each day", but don't assume a single day over 4 hours kills the exemption outright. Exceed 4 hours' driving on one or two days and the exemption can still apply, subject to those conditions; go over 4 hours on more than two days in the week and the exemption is lost, so the duty limit applies on the days it should. The common mistakes are treating this as a daily exemption rather than a weekly one, and assuming any single day over 4 hours forfeits it.
Watch the week boundary on overnight shifts. If the rules applied on the day a shift began, they apply to the whole of that shift, even if it finishes in a week in which the driver would otherwise be exempt.
Some lighter vehicles are exempt from the 11-hour duty limit while still bound by the 10-hour driving limit. This applies to goods vehicles (including dual-purpose vehicles) not exceeding 3.5 tonnes, when used:
This exemption only concerns the duty limit. The 10-hour driving limit still applies. If your operation doesn’t fall squarely into one of these categories, assume both limits apply.
This is the point operators most often get wrong. The GB domestic rules for goods vehicles set the two limits above and nothing else: no required break after a set number of hours, no minimum daily rest, and no weekly rest pattern.
That does not make breaks and rest optional. Drivers running under GB domestic rules are still covered by the Working Time Regulations 1998, which require "adequate rest" long enough and continuous enough that the driver does not put themselves or others at risk. A schedule that is technically within 10 hours’ driving and 11 hours’ duty can still be unsafe, or indefensible, if it leaves no realistic margin for breaks, rest or delays.
A common trap is to assume the structured break and rest rules people associate with the assimilated ("EU") rules, or with buses and coaches, also apply here. For goods vehicles under GB domestic rules, they don’t.
The 11-hour duty limit is a goods-vehicle rule. If you run passenger vehicles under GB domestic rules, the 10-hour daily driving limit still applies, but the duty side works differently:
So if someone tells you the GB domestic limit for a coach is "11 hours on duty", they are applying the wrong rule.
The limits can be suspended in a genuine emergency, where immediate action is needed to avoid danger to the life or health of people or animals, a serious interruption of essential public services (gas, water, electricity, drainage, electronic communications, postal services, or the use of roads, railways, ports or airports), or serious damage to property.
The relaxation lasts only for the duration of the emergency, and it exists for genuine emergencies, not commercial pressure or ordinary late running. The goods-vehicle emergency exemption sits in the Drivers’ Hours (Goods Vehicles) (Exemptions) Regulations 1986.
Mixed-rule days need particular care, and a change of vehicle or job type is not a reset. GOV.UK guidance on driving under both assimilated (or AETR) rules and GB domestic rules makes two points that matter here:
The practical result is that the driver’s day has to be read as one continuous working pattern, with each part accounted for under the correct rule set and while doing in-scope assimilated or AETR work, those rules must be followed in full, including the tachograph record.
Where a driver divides their time between goods and passenger vehicles under GB domestic rules, the appropriate GB rules for the vehicle type they spend most time driving apply for that day or week.
A limit is only useful if the operator can show how it was managed. For goods vehicles used for the carriage of goods that require an operator’s licence, a driver must keep a written record of their hours of work on a weekly record sheet for any day on which driving exceeds 4 hours. The operator is expected to check and sign each weekly record sheet.
There is a narrow exemption. Under the Drivers’ Hours (Goods Vehicles) (Keeping of Records) Regulations 1987, a driver is exempt from the record-keeping requirement on a day when they both drive for no more than 4 hours and stay within a 50km radius of the vehicle’s operating centre. Put the other way round: a record is required once the vehicle needs an O-licence and the driver either drives for more than 4 hours, or travels beyond 50km of the operating centre.
A tachograph that complies with the tachograph rules can be used to record the driver’s activity instead of a written weekly sheet where a domestic record is legally required, in which case all the rules on fitting and using the tachograph apply.
For transport managers, the control is simple: make total driving, total duty and any break or rest periods visible enough that a roadside examiner or a DVSA visit can follow the day without guesswork.
Before allocating or approving GB domestic goods work, check the day in this order:
That sequence catches most problems before they become infringements, and it gives you a clear audit trail if a driver is stopped or DVSA asks how the work was planned and monitored.
GB domestic goods rules are short on paper but easy to mismanage in a real fleet, because duty time sits all around the driving: loading, site waits, yard work, checks and paperwork. Proper analysis of tachograph records, where one is used to record activity, makes those patterns visible and turns the question "are we compliant?" into something you can evidence. That is the work Tacho Agent takes off operators' hands: analysing the records, flagging infringements and helping keep the paperwork audit-ready.
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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