Why do drivers try and get around WTD as if to say “Hey, I WANT my boss to force me to work an 84 hour week - I’m not happy at all at being limited to 48 hours for the same pay!”
When RM introduced their compliance routine to the whole thing, you were awarded zero hours for breaks (because they were unpaid) but NOT zero hours for POA, since it isn’t recognised by them, being paid every hour when not on break instead.
The first 20 days leave a year (statutory leave) counted as 8 hours per day, with all leave beyond 20 days counting as zero hours a day.
If you booked a full week’s holiday, you were awared 48 hours against, regardless of you having a 4,5 or 6 day normal working week. This meant for those with a 4 or 5 day working week, fully aided by a brain, you booked as many odd days out of your full year’s leave entitlement as possible - I certainly did!
Some duties were re-written to be longer shifts over less days per week, to get as many as possible on working weeks around the 48 mark. The clock was zeroed at the end of each 26 week reference period.
If you wanted to work a day’s overtime therefore, in order to keep the balance, you needed to take a day’s non-stat leave before the end of the 26 week period. This would mean taking a lot of “odd days” rather than blocks of leave like would normally be the case. Because of the need to take odd days leave, the firm also left a loophole for those on 4 day weeks, but in their minds, compensated for it by clipping the 4-day weeker’s leave entitlement so that it was measured in “weeks” rather than “days”. Eg. If your entitlement was 5 weeks, and you did a 5 day week, you got 25 days leave per year. If you worked a 4 day week, your five week’s entitlement was only 20 days, because it was 5x4! New Recruits therefore could not legally be put on 4 day weeks, because they’d only have the base 4 week holiday entitlement, and working the 4 day week would give them a mere 16 days leave a year, which is below minimum legal requirements! This prevented abuses like “Johnny come lately” picking you out of your plum job, because he wouldn’t have the holiday seniority (the only seniority that exists in royal mail if one is to be honest…) to obtain the 5 weeks holiday requirement needed to pick into a 4 day week duty set!
In any case, hours were banked when you did less than 48 in a week (not including the breaks).
Eg.
Week 1-20 you did 48 hours every week (your normal hours)
Week 21-25 you decide to cram the overtime, thus gaining 8 hours per week against your (for instance) so you’d also have to take a day’s non-stat leave to bring the balance back to 48 hours. If the day booked as leave was a longer day (say, 12 hours) then you could put in a 12 hour shift as an overtime day, and still maintain the balance. You tended therefore to book duty days off that had longer base shifts, thus it gave you more banked hours back than booking off a “short shift” day. I would have thought that this is obvious and common sense, but you’d be suprised how many chose to never take odd days off on the longer shifts rather than the shorter ones!
The key points here are (1) taking leave in dribs and drabs, (2) taking a balanced amount of leave on both sides of the 26 week cut off throughout the year, and (3) assuming you actually want to max-out any overtime worked.
For salaried people on 5 day weeks, I gather that you won’t be paid extra for working overtime, so any delays are surely booked as POA, and count zero towards aggregate.?
I can’t really understand what people’s beef with all this is. Yes, it sound complicated enough so that some staff will forego overtime, as they’re not sure they can get their hours to balance if they DO some! That’s ok for people like me, who’ll just step in and pick up all the plummy overtime shifts, taking advantage of being able to read the system better than others it seems. 
No doubt working out how to work a 56-60 hour week paid on a regular basis makes me a scumbag as usual in the eyes of those who can’t be arsed to work it all out, but it’s not my fault that I’m in the minority for being “paid by the hour” (even as a full timer) rather than salaried in the first place, which just leaves one open to the constant employer abuse of working huge weekly hourages, based upon the time you walk out of your front door to the time you walk back in it again x shifts per week.
All drivers should be trying to get 60 hours pay for being on duty 48 hours rather than being on duty 56-60 hours, away from home 84 hours plus, AND being limited to 48 hours pay, which is how the system will abuse THEM if they let it!
How many full time employers are still paying by the hour as opposed to salaried anyway? - If hourly paid, you finish 2 hours late, you automatically book 2 hours overtime. If you are salaried, you get “banked hours” instead, and might get a day off in lieu occasionally, but from what I’ve seen of it (sainsburys for example), you don’t hold your breath…
The compliance officer is the one trying to appese the authorities here, and might be “forced” to give you paid time off if they screw up on your hours, which usually takes the form of limiting the amount of overtime that people book to take full account of banked hours.
At RM, the overtime was given to the applying driver with the most “banked hours” to spare, which actually makes a lot of sense if you think about it!
I bet no one is obeying the WTD on working longer than 10 hour shifts on nights though! 
