Compensatory Weekly Rest

[Maigret]

One for the “gurus” I think!


Obviously, when a driver takes a reduced Weekly rest of less than 45 hours, that has to be compensated for. That compensation has to be repaid, en bloc, prior to the end of the third Fixed Week after the week that the reduction took place.

My questions are:

If that compensation is not met, let’s say a 10 hour shortfall, there is an infringement generated. Is that a straightforward breach of a Weekly Rest in this case it would be 55 hours or 34 hours, or is it a separate infringement category altogether for example “breach of compensatory Weekly Rest”?

The follow up question is this. If compensation is not repaid by the end of the 3rd Fixed Week, is that it - ie infringement generated and start a new cycle? Or does the compensation in effect “roll on” and accumulate until it is settled - a bit like driving time when a Daily Rest period is not taken?

I suspect my question may need clarification but let’s see how we go!!

[SuperMultiBlue]

Good qwestshuns

Also interested in this

[tachograph]

One for the “gurus” I think!
I don't do the guru thing but will give my opinions anyway.

Obviously, when a driver takes a reduced Weekly rest of less than 45 hours, that has to be compensated for. That compensation has to be repaid, en bloc, prior to the end of the third Fixed Week after the week that the reduction took place.

My questions are:

If that compensation is not met, let’s say a 10 hour shortfall, there is an infringement generated. Is that a straightforward breach of a Weekly Rest in this case it would be 55 hours or 34 hours, or is it a separate infringement category altogether for example “breach of compensatory Weekly Rest”?
I could be wrong but I'm reasonably sure analysis software would generate an infringement for "Insufficient weekly rest".

I think this has happened to someone here but I can't remember who it was


The follow up question is this. If compensation is not repaid by the end of the 3rd Fixed Week, is that it - ie infringement generated and start a new cycle? Or does the compensation in effect “roll on” and accumulate until it is settled - a bit like driving time when a Daily Rest period is not taken?
I wouldn't think you can just write off the offence so I would say that the compensation would still need to be paid back and if it wasn't it could generate more infringements.

Bear in mind that if, say compensation of 20 hours, was required and for the 3 weeks after the reduced weekly rest period you had regular 45 hour weekly rest periods, one of those regular weekly rest periods could count as a reduced weekly rest period plus the compensation that's owed.

On the other hand if we was talking about what the DVSA would or could do, you wouldn't be penalised (at the road-side) after 28 days from the offence so the sheet would have to be swept clean (I think ).

I suspect my question may need clarification but let’s see how we go!!

[Maigret]

Great stuff as usual. This offence is almost like Time Travel!!

Just another thought. If a driver basically takes 23 hours Weekly Rest, that’s a straight offence. From what I have seen, there would not be then a compensation requirement of 22 hours generated. It would just be a straight “no Weekly Rest”. Would this then be a base to argue that the compensation offence does stop at midnight at the end of the 3rd week?

Tachograph- your comments re Historics are really interesting. If the compensation doesn’t end at the end of the 3rd week and just continues to accumulate, in effect it’s a permanently “ongoing offence” in effect until repaid. This could potentially attract a prohibition several weeks after the relevant “third week” had finished and the driver could have had several periods of WR well above 45 hours! Now that would be 2 bites of the cherry!!

[tachograph]

Just another thought. If a driver basically takes 23 hours Weekly Rest, that’s a straight offence. From what I have seen, there would not be then a compensation requirement of 22 hours generated. It would just be a straight “no Weekly Rest”. Would this then be a base to argue that the compensation offence does stop at midnight at the end of the 3rd week?

As far as I can tell from the DVSA enforcement policy booklet a 23 hour weekly rest would still be regarded as insufficient weekly rest, there doesn't seem to be an offence of not paying back compensation so it must be insufficient weekly rest (Page 119)

As far as compensation is concerned, you could certainly get done for it up-to 28 days after the reduced weekly rest period .... or would it be 28 days from the last date that the compensation should have been paid back by, I suppose you could say that's when the offence really starts, up until the end of the 3rd week after the reduced weekly rest period there is no offence committed because there's still time to pay back the compensation (for simplicity I'm assuming we're talking about a single reduced weekly rest period), so assuming that a weekly rest period at the end of the third week would be insufficient weekly rest because of the missing compensation the infringement for insufficient weekly rest would be generated then, so it would still be historically current (for want of a better phrase) for 28 days from that date (the end of the third week or from the weekly rest period immediately prior to that).

In order to answer the question we need to know when the offence is committed, having a reduced weekly rest period certainly isn't an offence, the offence is in not paying it back so would the last weekly rest period prior to the end of the third week be when the offence is committed ?

Does that make sense

I don't know how analysis software treats the situation after the 3 weeks but you're probably right, you can't just keep getting infringements for the same offence, that would be daft.

Tachograph- your comments re Historics are really interesting. If the compensation doesn’t end at the end of the 3rd week and just continues to accumulate, in effect it’s a permanently “ongoing offence” in effect until repaid. This could potentially attract a prohibition several weeks after the relevant “third week” had finished and the driver could have had several periods of WR well above 45 hours! Now that would be 2 bites of the cherry!!

As above, maybe as the infringement would be generated at the end of the third week perhaps you could be penalised by the DVSA for 28 days after that, though parking anyone up when they've had several weekly rest periods after the relevant reduced weekly rest period would be futile.

[Maigret]

Tachograph, I went down a similar thought process to yourself and came to the following conclusions after a bit more contemplation.

Like you, I could not find any such offence as failing to compensate for reduced weekly rest- anywhere. Reducing weekly rest would appear to be, in effect, a derogation from regular weekly rest periods and so, if a driver does not comply with every requirement of the derogation, he is left with having had to comply with the full regular weekly rest requirements ie 45 hours.

If he fails to compensate he is then too late to go back to the week in which he reduced, to take the regular weekly rest he was required to take. The derogation in effect gives him 3 Fixed weeks to repay the “loan” that he has effectively taken out. If if fails to repay the loan then the week that reduction took place in, would be consequently short of the required 45 hours regular weekly rest and would therefore be an offence. Therefore the Sunday (the last day of the Fixed Week) of that reduced week would mark the offence date and not the Sunday 3 weeks later.

What rest he takes after that reduced week is irrelevant because, if he thinks he has taken a reduced weekly rest that week he will of course have had to take a regular weekly rest the week before and he week after (let’s assume he does!) to comply with the minimum requirements of Article 8(6).