I think I already know the answer, but I’ll ask anyway because it might save us some bother.
I work in the live music industry. Part of our contract with some customers includes a 24-hours emergency service, whereby an engineer is available should any problems arise. The on-call engineer is done on a rota system - the duty stays with one person until they’ve either been called out (which is usually weeks, months, sometimes even longer) or are not available for whatever reason, and then moves to the next person on the list. Basically this system works and doesn’t prejudice any one person. To give you an idea, we’ve had three of these callouts that I can remember over the past 2 years.
However, I think we’re going to need to add someone to the on-call list - someone who currently drives for us under EU regs. The engineer in question doesn’t drive regularly - it can be anything from 0 to 20-ish hours in a given week, so he would have plenty of working time left. My question is, would being on call count as a POA rather than rest, thus making the whole thing impractical, even though the likelihood of him being called out whilst at home resting is extremely low?
Well legally it can’t be POA as the driver wouldn’t know how long he’ll be waiting, given the length of time between call outs I assume the driver is free to dispose of his time as he wishes until a call out so I would say it’s basically rest.
I think the biggest problem is what you do when the driver gets called out and is needed to drive the following day or the same day, or if he’s been driving and gets called out during the daily rest period.
He would need to comply with the daily and weekly rest periods if doing any in-scope driving during the week, and so on some occasions may not be legally available to go even if he was called out.
Hi tachograph, thanks for your answer. I forgot about the “known waiting time” bit regarding POA, and classifying the time as ‘rest’ works for all of us
tachograph:
I think the biggest problem is what you do when the driver gets called out and is needed to drive the following day or the same day, or if he’s been driving and gets called out during the daily rest period.
He would need to comply with the daily and weekly rest periods if doing any in-scope driving during the week, and so on some occasions may not be legally available to go even if he was called out.
Bearing in mind the amount of in-scope driving he does (not much), I don’t think that’ll be a problem. Callouts would only ever be out-of-scope (Transit van), and it shouldn’t be difficult to rearrange duties to comply with the law if anything gets tight.
alexc:
Hi tachograph, thanks for your answer. I forgot about the “known waiting time” bit regarding POA, and classifying the time as ‘rest’ works for all of us
tachograph:
I think the biggest problem is what you do when the driver gets called out and is needed to drive the following day or the same day, or if he’s been driving and gets called out during the daily rest period.
He would need to comply with the daily and weekly rest periods if doing any in-scope driving during the week, and so on some occasions may not be legally available to go even if he was called out.
Bearing in mind the amount of in-scope driving he does (not much), I don’t think that’ll be a problem. Callouts would only ever be out-of-scope (Transit van), and it shouldn’t be difficult to rearrange duties to comply with the law if anything gets tight.
Alex
You’re welcome
Doesn’t matter if it’s out of scope of EU regulations, in any week when any in-scope driving is done any work done in that week that’s not in-scope of EU regulations should be recorded as “other work”, and to comply with the EU regulations the driver would need to comply with the daily and weekly rest periods.
So you may need to re-arrange duties if you wish to comply with the regulations
