I have been driving dustcarts for my local council for the last 9 months and have never had a problem with the hours as it is usually 5 days a week. However there is a lot more work at the minute resulting in unlimited Saturday work. Now I know that I am on domestic rules as the vehicles don’t even have a tacho fitted and we use logbooks. The main question I am trying to find out is what is the required weekly rest period. I have searched the forums for ages and cannot find the answer I’m looking for. I hope somebody could shed some light on this.
I have been driving dustcarts for my local council for the last 9 months and have never had a problem with the hours as it is usually 5 days a week. However there is a lot more work at the minute resulting in unlimited Saturday work. Now I know that I am on domestic rules as the vehicles don’t even have a tacho fitted and we use logbooks. The main question I am trying to find out is what is the required weekly rest period. I have searched the forums for ages and cannot find the answer I’m looking for. I hope somebody could shed some light on this.
Thanks
Charlie
There is no legally required weekly rest period for domestic regulations.
That doesn’t mean that you will be on domestic rules at the weekend though, so perhaps it would help if you described the nature of the Saturday work because if it’s not the same as the weekday work it could be on EU regulations.
I have been driving dustcarts for my local council for the last 9 months and have never had a problem with the hours as it is usually 5 days a week. However there is a lot more work at the minute resulting in unlimited Saturday work. Now I know that I am on domestic rules as the vehicles don’t even have a tacho fitted and we use logbooks. The main question I am trying to find out is what is the required weekly rest period. I have searched the forums for ages and cannot find the answer I’m looking for. I hope somebody could shed some light on this.
Thanks
Charlie
There is no compulsory daily or weekly rest period on UK domestic regs nor are there any required breaks
On domestic regs you can work 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year doing 10 hours driving/11 hours working a day (24 hours)
Thanks for the helpful replies. Saturday work often comprises of emptying bins that have been missed by other crews, so driving around the local area collecting bins every 20 minutes instead of every 30 seconds!
Charlieo94:
Thanks for the helpful replies. Saturday work often comprises of emptying bins that have been missed by other crews, so driving around the local area collecting bins every 20 minutes instead of every 30 seconds!
It’s basically still domestic door to door collections then, so no problems with the regulations
Not in terms of “maximum x metres between collections”, no. DfT are quite clear though that the collection from households etc and “public service” aspects are essential, and that transport (as opposed to collection) has to be a secondary function - i.e. that shifting bulk loads of rubbish from one major centre to another (even if it was actually collected on a door-to-door basis) is not exempt from EU Regs.
I also work for the council my road patcher is on out of scope all the time as we don’t use tachos soo my question is can I drive for 4 hrs after work for a haulier using the Tacho of coarse and do I need to take a daily rest…
oneillmartin:
I also work for the council my road patcher is on out of scope all the time as we don’t use tachos soo my question is can I drive for 4 hrs after work for a haulier using the Tacho of coarse and do I need to take a daily rest…
Legal example
Domestic from 0700 to 1600 then EU regs from 1630 to 2030 leaving a reduced daily rest of 10.5 hours
Domestic is all other work for the EU regs and your domestic records are counted as official records for the EU regs other work
The weekly rest rules also come into force if doing any EU regs work in the fixed week
So it makes no difference being out of scope all day I must still get my reduced 9 hrs at minimum should I keep manual record so if day job like manual. Filling out Tacho chart
oneillmartin:
So it makes no difference being out of scope all day I must still get my reduced 9 hrs at minimum should I keep manual record so if day job like manual. Filling out Tacho chart
As soon as you do any work to EU regulations you should comply with the daily rest requirement.
As ROG said the work to domestic regulations counts as other work for the EU regulations, so your shift would start when you start the domestic job and if you then do a few hours on EU regulations you would need to have completed a daily rest period within 24 hours from the start of the shift.
If you keep the tachograph on out of scope when working to domestic regulations presumably you’re using your driver card, if that’s the case that will count as a record for the EU regulations, so no charts will be necessary.
oneillmartin:
Yah we have log sheets so Friday eve when I have no work on sat of any sort could I drive then for 9 hrs with breaks after my day domestic work
Not legally no, well not unless you do a very short shift on Fridays anyway.
The work on domestic regulations counts as other work for the EU rules, so if you did a days work on domestic regulations then went onto EU regulations you would need to complete a daily rest period within 24 hours from the start of the shift which would be when you started the usual job.
If you start work on domestic regulations at 08:00 Friday and finish at 16:30 then go onto EU regulations, you would need to have a daily rest period completed by 08:00 Saturday.
If you did this no more than three times during the week (assuming you normally work Monday to Friday) you would need to finish work no later than 23:00 so that you could complete a 9 hour reduced daily rest period within the 24 hour period.
In any week that you do some work to EU regulations you should also comply with the weekly rest requirements.
A question on tachograph if I drive 2 hrs take 45 break I then drive 4.5 hrs take 45 break is it then ok to drive the remaing driving time of 2.5 hrs at the end is this ok
oneillmartin:
A question on tachograph if I drive 2 hrs take 45 break I then drive 4.5 hrs take 45 break is it then ok to drive the remaing driving time of 2.5 hrs at the end is this ok
Yes that fine.
The EU regulations stipulate you can drive for 9 hours between daily rest periods (10 hours twice a week) and that after driving 4.5 hours you must have a 45 minute break, but if you don’t use the whole 4.5 hours driving you don’t lose any of the 9/10 hours daily driving period.
Basically you can split the daily driving period however you like as long as you don’t go over 4.5 hours driving without a 45 minute break.
As you probably know the 45 minute driving break can be split into two parts if you wish, the first part must be at-least 15 minutes and the second part must be at-least 30 minutes and they must be taken in that order.
