ROG:
Wheel Nut:
I am quite willing to be wrong on this, quite surprised, but wrong, along the same lines of voluntary or compulsory DCPC training.If it is voluntary and you arrange it with a gang of workmates you can do 14 hours over the weekend without it affecting your weekly rest, yet if you are paid for doing it, you must count that time as duty. At the end of the weekend you have done the same thing, and if you want to be a professional driver it is compulsory.
We all agree that refusing Jury Service is not an option, it is not voluntary so it must by nature be compulsory, one of the determining factors of deciding whether it is duty time or rest time.
I have put this thread on watch and have opened another dialogue with some lawmakers.
Rest and other days off
The period of time unaccounted for between successive charts produced by a driver should normally be regarded as (unless there is evidence to the contrary) a rest period when drivers are able to dispose freely of their time. In the UK, drivers are not expected to account for this period, unless enforcement authorities have reason to believe that they were working.I still think this advice from the VOSA guide is open to good legal interpretation though.
There was already an official reply on here somewhere which spelled out the difference between voluntary and compulsory training
DCPC is not voluntary but compulsory because if it is not done then the driver cannot carry on working as a LGV driver
Trying to make an argument for it being paid (or not) or deciding when to do it makes no difference to the fact that it is compulsory for the first 35 hours if the driver then decided to do another 14 hours on top of the 35 then that would not be compulsory because they can choose to do that extra 14 hours or not
Compulsory does not mean being told to do it at a certain time by an employer etc - it means it is compulsory to do within a 5 year period - just like jury service is compulsory to do and a time frame is given for doing it
It was my “official reply” Rog. I am aware of it, it was from Mike Penning