What’s the answer? Van driver regulations

Annie Hayes

Sift

Editor

What’s the answer? Van driver regulations

By Annie Hayes

This week Kate Gazzard, solicitor at Clarkslegal LLP and Stephanie Wooton, employment law expert at Browne Jacobson present their ideas on the considerations of employing a van driver.

The question:
We are about to employ a full time van driver for the first time. Is anyone able to help me with regulations for this post please? Particularly with the number of hours driving before a break must be taken. Help on all aspects of the job would be gratefully received.

Margaret Godding

The answers:
Kate Gazzard is a solicitor at Clarkslegal LLP

On the assumption that the van is less than 3.5 tonnes, the driver will be covered by the Working Time Regulations. As you will be aware, these entitle workers to daily and weekly rest breaks.

However, mobile workers such as van drivers are excluded from these entitlements and so you just need to ensure that the driver gets ‘adequate rest’ which means that he or she must take regular rest periods. These should be sufficiently long and continuous to ensure that fatigue or other irregular working patterns do not cause the driver to injure themselves, fellow workers or others, and that no damage to their health is incurred, either in the short or longer term.

Kate Gazzard can be contacted at: kgazzard@clarkslegal.com

Stephanie Wooton, employment law expert, Browne Jacobson.

As you refer to a ‘van’, I am assuming this is a small vehicle, where the maximum permissible weight does not exceed 3.5 tonnes.

In these circumstances, the Working Time Regulations 1998 will apply to your driver. The general provisions set out by the Regulations are:

Maximum 48 hour working week on average (although currently it is lawful for the driver to opt-out of this requirement.)

Uninterrupted rest breaks of 20 minutes where working time is more than six hours.

Four weeks paid annual leave

Health checks for night workers

Different EC rules apply to drivers of larger vehicles. Generally, a vehicle required by EC legislation to have a tachograph will be affected by The Road Transport (Working Time) Regulations 2005, rather than the regulations mentioned above). The Department of Transport provides useful guidance on the relevant requirements.

General provisions are:

‘Working time’ restricted to an average of 48 hour over week and a maximum of 60 hours in any single week (no opt out provisions)

Night workers limited to 10 hours in each 24 hour period

A break of 30 mins required for 6-9 hours work; 45 mins for over nine hours.

Breaks can be divided in to slots of no less than 15 minutes.

Both the method of calculating the average working week and the limit on night-and-day work may be varied by a workforce agreement. A workforce agreement is a written agreement negotiated by an employer with the staff concerned or their duly elected representatives.

Stephanie can be contacted at: swooton@brownejacobson.com

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HRZone highly recommends that any answers are taken as a starting point for guidance only.

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