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How weekly rest and reduced weekly rest work under GB drivers’ hours rules - the 45 and 24-hour limits, the two-week pattern and how to compensate.
QUICK ANSWER
A regular weekly rest is at least 45 hours off. You can reduce it to a minimum of 24 hours, but only every other week. Whenever you reduce a weekly rest, you owe the difference back as compensation: a single unbroken block of rest, attached to another rest period of at least nine hours, taken by the end of the third week after the week you cut short.
A weekly rest must also start no later than the end of six consecutive 24-hour periods (144 hours) from the end of your last one, so even a run of long days can force a weekly rest before the calendar week is out.
The core figures:
The definitions sit in Article 4 of assimilated Regulation (EC) 561/2006, and the weekly rest requirements in Article 8; the retained version of what most drivers still call “the EU rules”.
For each driver, work through weekly rest in this order:
GOV.UK now calls these the assimilated rules (previously called the EU rules). The change is in name and legal basis, not in the limits: since Brexit, Regulation (EC) 561/2006 has had effect in Great Britain as assimilated direct legislation, but the weekly rest figures below are unchanged. You will still hear drivers, trainers and tachograph software refer to “EU rules”. For weekly rest purposes they mean the same thing.
Weekly rest under the assimilated rules covers most in-scope HGV and PSV work recorded on a tachograph:
If a vehicle is exempt from the assimilated rules, it usually falls under the GB domestic rules instead, which have their own, different, rest requirements (including at least one period of 24 hours off duty every two weeks). This article deals only with weekly rest under the assimilated rules.
A fixed week runs from 00:00 on Monday to 24:00 the following Sunday. The weekly rest rules are measured against this fixed week, not against whatever seven-day stretch a driver happens to be working.
Your working week does not have to line up with the fixed week. A weekly rest can fall in the middle of a fixed week, and that is perfectly acceptable, provided all the limits are still met. The working week simply runs from the end of one weekly rest to the start of the next.
Weekly rest is not just time spent not driving. It has to be an uninterrupted period in which the driver is free to dispose of their time as they wish. No driving and no other work.
That last part catches people out. The following cannot count as rest and must be recorded as duty or other work:
So a driver who spends a “rest day” doing a shift elsewhere, or sitting an employer-booked CPC course, has not taken rest for those hours, and a rest period you thought was clean can be broken by activity you weren’t tracking.
A regular weekly rest is an unbroken period of at least 45 hours. It cannot be taken in the vehicle (see the cab ban below). It can be longer than 45 hours; anything over that is simply more rest, and the extra can absorb a compensation debt if you plan it that way.
A reduced weekly rest is any weekly rest of at least 24 hours but less than 45. Anything below 24 hours is not a weekly rest at all. Taking a reduced rest is allowed, but it limits what you can do the following week and creates a compensation debt.
Common misunderstanding: a 36-hour rest is not a “full” weekly rest. Under an older regulation (3820/85) a 36-hour rest at base counted as a regular rest, but that has not been the case since 561/2006. Today, anything under 45 hours is a reduced weekly rest and must be compensated.
In any two consecutive fixed weeks, a driver must take at least:
Other weekly rests of either type can be taken on top of that minimum. The practical headline for UK domestic work is that you should not plan around two reduced weekly rests in a row. However, please refer to the nuance two sections down.
A weekly rest must start no later than the end of six consecutive 24-hour periods from the end of your previous weekly rest. The simplest way to picture it: count 144 hours (6 × 24) from the moment your last weekly rest ended. The next one must have started by then.
Two things worth knowing:
Worked example. Your last weekly rest ends at 06:00 on Monday. Six 24-hour periods later is 06:00 the following Sunday. Your next weekly rest must therefore have started by 06:00 that Sunday, not merely been scheduled for some point in the week.
A weekly rest that falls across two fixed weeks can be counted in either week, but not both. That single allowance is behind a lot of rota confusion, especially with Sunday-night returns and Monday-morning starts, so be deliberate about which week you assign it to.
There is a useful extension. Where a rest period is at least 69 hours in total and runs from one fixed week into the next, it can be counted as two back-to-back weekly rests. For example, a 45-hour regular rest followed by a 24-hour reduced rest, provided no more than 144 hours have passed between the end of the previous weekly rest and the start of the following one.
This is how a driver can legitimately bank two weekly rests across a week boundary from a single long break. The 24-hour portion is still a reduced rest, so it still has to be compensated.
On ordinary UK domestic work, don’t plan around two reduced weekly rests as the normal pattern. In any two consecutive fixed weeks you still need at least one regular and one reduced rest, or two regular rests.
There is a genuine nuance, though. DVSA’s own examples show situations where two reduced weekly rests fall consecutively because an extra reduced rest is needed to avoid breaching the six 24-hour limit between weekly rests. Where that happens, only the reduced rest that is needed to satisfy the “one regular and one reduced in two consecutive fixed weeks” requirement has to be compensated.
This is not permission to run repeated 24-hour weekends. It is a by-product of the fixed-week test and the six-day test interacting. If your analysis flags two reduced rests in a row, check both tests rather than assuming an infringement. And, check whether the driver is actually on qualifying international work (below), which is the other, separate route to two consecutive reduced rests.
Reduce a weekly rest and you owe the difference back. The compensation rules are specific, and this is the part operators most often get wrong.
You owe the shortfall against 45 hours. Two worked examples, both using DVSA’s own arithmetic:
The compensation must be taken before the end of the third week following the week in which you took the reduced rest. Reduce in week 1, and the debt must be cleared by the end of week 4.
Two conditions, both easy to trip over:
Worked example. A driver reduces to 24 hours in week 1, so owes 21 hours. The simplest fix is to add those 21 hours onto the next regular weekly rest: 45 + 21 = a 66-hour rest, taken in one block by the end of week 4.
A reduced weekly rest (24 up to 45 hours) can be taken in the cab, provided the vehicle is stationary and has suitable sleeping facilities, meaning a bunk or bed designed primarily for sleeping on. If the cab has no proper bed, the rest should be taken in other accommodation such as a hotel, hostel, guest house, static caravan or rental.
A regular weekly rest, and any weekly rest of more than 45 hours that includes compensation, cannot be taken in the vehicle at all. These must be taken in suitable, gender-friendly accommodation with adequate sleeping and sanitary facilities, and the employer must meet the cost of that accommodation. This is Article 8(8) of 561/2006 as it has effect in GB.
Where a driver accompanies the vehicle on a ferry or train, a weekly rest can be interrupted, no more than twice, and for no more than one hour in total (for boarding, disembarking and customs).
A driver on call during a weekly rest must still be free to dispose of that time as they choose. An employer cannot require them to stay at or near a particular place. Agreeing to answer the phone is fine if the driver chooses to, but actually being called back to work only counts if the legally required rest is already complete or it is a genuine emergency.
For waste rounds, scaffolding and similar operations with on-call or yard-start patterns, this is worth getting right: an on-call restriction can quietly turn what looks like rest into duty.
There is one situation where two consecutive reduced weekly rests are a planned option: a driver engaged in the international carriage of goods. The conditions are strict:
This does not apply to AETR journeys. On work run under AETR rules (UK to non-EU countries), only one reduced weekly rest may be taken at a time and it must be followed by a regular weekly rest.
Coach drivers on a single international occasional service can, in defined circumstances, take their weekly rest after 12 consecutive 24-hour periods rather than six. It is a narrow derogation with its own conditions and sits outside the scope of this article.
Getting weekly rest right does not, on its own, prove working time compliance. The Road Transport (Working Time) Regulations 2005 are a separate set of limits for mobile workers; a 48-hour average working week (over a 17-week reference period, extendable to 26 by agreement) and a 60-hour ceiling in any single week. A driver can be compliant on weekly rest and still breach working time, or the other way round.
See Working time rules: lorry, bus and coach drivers and crew (GOV.UK).
Weekly rest is one of the easier rules to get wrong on paper and one of the most visible in a driver’s tachograph data, because the pattern plays out over weeks rather than within a single shift. The compensation debt in particular is easy to lose track of when a driver’s weeks do not line up neatly.
Reduced rests, missed compensation and six-day breaches are easy to miss by eye and obvious in the data once someone is looking for them. Checking the records and flagging those infringements is the work Tacho Agent takes off your desk, so they reach you while there is still time to act.
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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