Horizontal Working Time Directive (1998)

The main Working Time Directive (93/104) was finally agreed in November 1993 and enforced within the UK on 1st October 1998. This directive extended rights to workers and placed an obligation on employers. However, the directive incorporated an exclusion for employees within the Road Transport Sector, as well as companies not wholly considered to be within the Transport Sector generally, an example of this would be a manufacturer who has a transport activity within its overall operation.

In June 2000, the EU's commitment to end the exclusions within the Transport Sector and the other exclusions that went to make up the 1998 WTD were brought to bear, effectively scrapping these exclusions and extending the scope of the main directive under the legal effect of the Horizontal Amending Directive (HAD - 2000/34). The result of this was to bring about some specific changes that would affect the Transport Sector in readiness for the implementation of the Road Transport Working Time Directive in April 2005. What this also achieved, was the application of the whole main directive (1998 WTD) to non-mobile workers. The impact of the Horizontal Directive was felt on 1st August 2003.

As a result of the above, despite the implementation of the Road Transport WTD in April 2005, some of the employees within the Transport Sector were not classed as 'Mobile Workers' and so were not affected by the 2005 Regulations, but remain under the umbrella of the 1998 Working Time Regulations. As such, we've reproduced the following means of calculating working time under these regulations.

Calculating working time under the 1998 Working Time Regulations

The number of hours worked each week should be averaged out over 17 weeks. This period of time is called the 'reference period'.

Workers and employers can agree to calculate the average weekly working time over a period of up to 52 weeks under a workforce or collective agreement.

The average weekly working time is calculated by dividing the number of hours worked by the number of weeks over which the average working week is being calculated. When calculating the average weekly working time, if the worker is away during the reference period because he or she is taking paid annual leave, maternity, paternity, adoption or parental leave, or is off sick you will need to make up for this time in your calculation.

Example 1

A worker has a standard working week of 40 hours and does overtime of 12 hours a week for the first 10 weeks of the 17 - week reference period. No leave is taken during the reference period.

The total hours worked is, therefore:

17 weeks of 40 hours and 10 weeks of 12 hours per week of overtime or (17 x 40) + (10 x 12) = 800.

Therefore that workers average is (total hours divided by a number of weeks) - 800 divided by 17 = 47.1 hours per week (average). The average limit of 48 hours has been complied with.

Example 2

A worker has a standard working week of 40 hours (8 hours a day) and does overtime of 8 hours a week for the first 12 weeks of the 17 week reference period. 4 days of leave are also taken during the reference period.

The total hours worked in the reference period is, therefore:

16 weeks and 1 day (40 hours a week and 8 hours a day) and 12 weeks of 8 hours of overtime or (16 x 40) + (1 x 8) + (12 x 8) = 744

Add the time worked to compensate for the 4 days left, taken from the first 4 working days after the reference period. The worker does no overtime, so 4 days of 8 hours (4 x 8 = 32) should be added to the total.

Therefore that workers average is (total hours divided by the number of weeks) - (744 + 32) divided by 17 = 45.6 hours per week. The average limit of 48 hours has been complied with.

For the majority of transport operators today, there is no need to calculate the Duty Time data as this information can be found via your Tachograph Analysis data as a separate WTD report based upon the Reference Periods you have agreed.

The following links will take you to the relevant legislation:

The Working Time Regulations 1998
The Working Time (Amendment) Regulations 2003
The Road Transport (Working Time) Regulations 2005