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How to interrupt daily and weekly rest for ferries and trains under GB drivers’ hours rules: the limits, tachograph recording and common traps.
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If a driver accompanies their vehicle onto a ferry or train, they’re allowed to interrupt certain rest periods to drive on and off without it counting as breaking the rest. The interruption can happen no more than twice, must total no more than one hour, and the driver must have a sleeper cabin, bunk or couchette to rest in. The rest still has to add up to the full required length, and it all has to fit inside the normal 24-hour window.
This works for a regular daily rest and for weekly rest periods. It does not work for a reduced daily rest - that’s the trap that catches people out.
Core figures at a glance:
This is set out in Article 9 of Regulation (EC) 561/2006 - the “assimilated” drivers’ hours rules as they apply in Great Britain, and in current DVSA guidance for both goods and passenger vehicles.
Normally a rest period has to be unbroken: the driver freely disposes of their time from start to finish. The ferry and train concession is a narrow, deliberate exception to that. It exists for one practical reason; so a driver can drive their unit onto a ferry or train at the start of a crossing and off again at the end, including any port, terminal or customs formalities, without losing the rest they take on board.
Those movements aren’t rest. They’re interruptions to rest. The concession is simply that, if the conditions are met, the interruptions don’t spoil the whole rest period.
The current version was shaped by Regulation (EU) 2020/1054, which widened the concession to cover reduced weekly rest as well as regular daily rest, and required proper sleeping facilities. Those changes were in force before the end of the Brexit transition period, so they carry through into the GB assimilated rules.
For the interruption to be legitimate, all of these must hold:
This is the everyday case: drive onto the ferry, sleep through the crossing, drive off. A regular daily rest of 11 hours, or 12 hours if you’re splitting it 3 + 9, can be interrupted up to twice, by no more than an hour in total, and still count as a regular daily rest.
The point people miss is that the interruption does not extend the rest. If a driver interrupts an 11-hour rest by an hour, they still need a full 11 hours of actual rest. So, the window from the start of the rest to its completion stretches to roughly 12 hours, but the rest itself must add up to 11. And for a single-manned driver, that has to be finished inside the 24-hour period that began when they came on duty.
The drive on and the drive off are not rest. They’re recorded as driving, and the driving counts towards the daily driving limit like any other driving.
Take a driver booked on an evening crossing:
Two interruptions, 35 minutes in total, a cabin to sleep in, and 11 hours of rest accumulated inside the 24-hour window. That’s compliant.
If the rest is split (3 hours plus 9 hours), the two interruptions can fall in either part: both in the 3-hour block, both in the 9-hour block, or one in each. The split must still be taken in order, though: at least 3 hours first, then at least 9 hours. Don’t use the ferry/train rule to patch several short rests together. It’s a narrow concession for one qualifying rest period, not a general permission to break up daily rest.
An interruption is the activity that breaks the rest because the driver has to move or deal with the vehicle. In practice that’s the time to board and disembark, plus any connected formalities.
The control that matters is the total. The one-hour limit is one hour across both interruptions combined, not one hour each way. If a driver takes 25 minutes to board and 40 minutes to disembark, that’s 65 minutes in total - over the limit - even though each movement looks short on its own. Two interruptions, one hour, full stop.
You cannot interrupt a reduced daily rest. The concession applies only to a regular daily rest, so a 9-hour reduced daily rest does not qualify.
If a driver is on a reduced daily rest and drives on or off a ferry mid-rest, that breaks the rest, and a broken reduced daily rest doesn’t count at all. In practice that means planning the crossing around a regular 11-hour daily rest. If the plan relies on 9 hours’ rest and includes boarding or disembarking movements, treat it as a problem before the vehicle leaves the yard.
Weekly rest can be interrupted too, but the conditions are tighter and they differ depending on whether it’s a reduced or a regular weekly rest.
A reduced weekly rest can be interrupted on much the same terms as a regular daily rest:
The normal compensation rule still applies, too. Any reduction from a full 45-hour weekly rest must be paid back as an equivalent block of rest, taken before the end of the third week following the week of the reduction, attached to another rest period of at least 9 hours. Interrupting the rest for a ferry doesn’t change that obligation.
A regular weekly rest can also be interrupted, but only on a longer crossing:
The 8-hour scheduled leg is the condition that’s easiest to fall foul of. On a short crossing, a regular weekly rest simply can’t be interrupted this way. And because a regular weekly rest can never be taken in the vehicle, the accommodation bar is higher than for an ordinary daily rest.
The whole concession hinges on the driver having somewhere proper to rest on board. For a regular daily rest or a reduced weekly rest, that’s a sleeper cabin, bunk or couchette. For a regular weekly rest it must be a sleeper cabin, and none of that rest can be taken in the vehicle cab.
No sleeping facility, no concession, and a reclining seat doesn’t count. Without a qualifying berth, the interruption would simply break the rest.
Not every minute on the crossing is automatically rest. Rest only counts where the driver can freely dispose of their own time.
DVSA guidance treats accompanying a vehicle on a ferry or train crossing as a period of availability where it isn’t being taken as a qualifying rest. The safest approach is to keep the legal rest calculation separate from ordinary waiting time, then check the tachograph record after the event to make sure each block is recorded as what it actually was.
Getting the rest right on paper is only half the job, it has to read correctly on the tachograph, too. For digital and smart tachographs:
It’s also worth keeping route evidence; booking confirmations, scheduled crossing times and cabin or berth allocation. If the records are queried later, that’s what explains why the ferry/train rule applied and that the conditions were met. A clean record matters: an interrupted rest that isn’t recorded properly can look like a broken rest to an enforcement officer, even when the driver did everything right.
On AETR journeys, broadly, journeys to, from or through non-EU countries that are AETR signatories, only a regular daily rest may be interrupted. The weekly rest concession does not apply, because the AETR agreement hasn’t yet been aligned with the 2020 changes. EU and TCA rules, by contrast, mirror the GB position for daily and reduced weekly rest. Where a job moves between assimilated and AETR planning, check which regime applies before relying on the ferry/train concession.
Before booking the crossing, run the proposed duty through these checks:
The rule is useful, but it’s unforgiving. Most infringements come from small planning assumptions: a delayed disembarkation, the wrong rest type, no cabin evidence, or a driver who knows the route but not the tachograph sequence.
This is one specific concession within the daily and weekly rest rules.
Related Tacho Agent guides:
Getting ferry and train days right is mostly about planning the crossing around the right rest type and making sure it’s recorded cleanly. That’s the kind of detail proper tachograph analysis is built to catch. Tacho Agent reviews the records, checks the rest type, the number and length of interruptions and the completion window together, and keeps the paperwork straight so a compliant crossing reads as compliant.
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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