LEGAL UPDATE ON WORKING TIME REGULATIONS

Published 29 May 2019

​What are the current rules?

The UK Working Time Regulations (WTR) currently state that employers must keep records to show that they are complying with the weekly working limit. This is currently a maximum of 48 hours per week unless the worker has 'opted out' of this limit.

What's changing?

The Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) has recently ruled in a Spanish Working Time case that employers are required to keep records of the actual daily time worked by employees. The court ruled that these records are necessary to monitor if organisations are complying with the EU Working Time Directive which includes the following requirements:

- the weekly working limit: this is set to a maximum of 48 hours per week on average (unless the employee has 'opted out' of this limit.)
- the minimum daily rest period: this is at least 11 hours rest in every 24 hour period.
- the weekly rest period: ​this is at least an uninterrupted 24 hours rest in each 7 day period.

This shows that the records kept per current UK legislation don't do enough to ensure that workers are protected as required by the EU instruction because they don't explicitly require employers to keep records to show that daily and weekly rest periods have been met.

Although the UK's future relationship with the EU remains uncertain, if this change in EU law remains relevant in the UK then the government will need to amend the current UK Working Time Regulations to reflect this EU Directive. 

It is currently stated that the UK will continue to be bound by CJEU caselaw unless it has been specifically overturned. Therefore, on this basis, this case would still be relevant even once/if Brexit goes ahead.

What do you need to do?

Employers should review their current system and procedures to ensure they are recording the following:

- the amount of time worked; and
- when the time was worked by the employee.

This may be difficult in some situations so it is important to keep communicating with employees to monitor and record when they are working and how long for.


Please contact our payroll department on 01254 300 050 if you have any questions.