Two record sets, two periods, and people mix them up #
The question gets a confusing answer online because there is more than one answer. There are drivers' hours records, and there are road transport working time records, and they do not share a retention period.
| Record | Period | Held by |
|---|---|---|
| Charts, manual records and digital data for drivers' hours | Produce to enforcement officers for 12 months | The operator |
| Road transport working time records | Two years after the period in question | The operator |
| Charts and manual records carried by the driver | Current day plus the previous 28 calendar days, or 56 days for international journeys to and from an EU member country | The driver, in the vehicle |
The third row is the one that gets checked at the roadside. GOV.UK states the driver must present charts and any legally required manual records for the current day and the previous 28 calendar days for AETR or domestic journeys under the assimilated rules, or 56 days for international journeys to and from an EU member country, together with the driver card where one has been issued.
The limits the records are evidence of #
Under the assimilated rules, which apply to vehicles over 3.5 tonnes maximum weight operating in the UK or travelling to, from or through EU countries, GOV.UK sets out:
| Limit | Rule |
|---|---|
| Daily driving | No more than 9 hours in a day, which can be extended to 10 hours twice a week |
| Weekly driving | 56 hours in a week |
| Fortnightly driving | 90 hours in any 2 consecutive weeks |
| Breaks | A break or breaks totalling at least 45 minutes after no more than 4 hours 30 minutes driving |
| Daily rest | At least 11 hours every day, reducible to 9 hours three times between any 2 weekly rest periods |
| Weekly rest | An unbroken 45 hours every week, reducible to 24 hours every other week |
Separately, the road transport working time rules cap weekly working time at an average of 48 hours over a 17 or 26 week reference period, with a maximum of 60 hours in any single week provided the average holds.
The night work and break rules inside the working time set
Night work for goods vehicles must not exceed 10 hours in any 24 hour period, which may be exceeded under a collective or workforce agreement. No more than six consecutive hours may be worked without a break, breaks total at least 30 minutes on a working day of 6 to 9 hours and at least 45 minutes beyond 9 hours, and an individual break must be at least 15 minutes.
Keeping is not the duty. Checking is. #
This is the part worth reading twice, because it is where the administrative question and the legal one separate. GOV.UK states that operators must make regular checks of charts, manual records and digital data to ensure compliance, produce records to enforcement officers for 12 months, and do one thing more.
take all reasonable steps to prevent breaches of the rules
Which parts of this run on rules #
Runs on rules
- Knowing which drivers have data missing for a given week, which is a gap in a set
- Knowing which records fall out of the 12 month window next month, which is date arithmetic
- Calculating whether a pattern of duty breaches a limit, because the limits are numeric and published
- Producing records when an enforcement officer asks, if they were filed against the driver and the date
Needs a transport manager
- Deciding what an infringement means for that driver, which is a management responsibility
- Deciding what to change so it does not recur, which is the substance of the duty
- Planning a route that respects the limits, which is judgement informed by arithmetic
The pattern is consistent with everything else in this section. Detection, arithmetic and retrieval are mechanical. Deciding what to do about what was detected is not, and it should not be. The practical question for a small operator is which column the transport manager is spending the week in, and in most operations we look at, the answer is the left one.
The download schedule that feeds all of this is covered on tachograph download deadlines, and the wider set of licence undertakings on operator licence paperwork. To put hours against your own compliance cycle, start with the cost of admin time calculator.