As the European Union is undergoing changes in road and transportation laws, the United Kingdom seems to be adapting to them. The UK government has recently announced that some of the rules of the EU Mobility Package will now be applied in the country‘s territory. Simultaneously, the long prolonged law on maximum work hours for drivers will also be changing. In this article we describe these two main changes.

The EU Mobility Package rules

As mentioned above, the UK government has announced that it will be applying some of the EU Mobility Package rules in its territory and to all of its drivers traveling to the EU. All drivers entering or leaving the territory of the United Kingdom will now be required to register border crossing information in their tachographs. In order to do so, it is important to now the code of the country which you are entering. The code for the United Kingdom is (15)H. The codes of other European countries can be found here https://dtc.jrc.ec.europa.eu/dtc_nation_codes.php.html.

In the upcoming months some of the other Mobility Package rules, such as the requirement for companies to pay their drivers the minimum applicable salary of the member state in which the driver is working, are expected to come into force. However, this is not official yet. The drivers of the United Kingdom are also required to abide by the Mobility Package rules while in the European Union (e.g.: rules regarding the minimum rest period and maximum working hours per week).

The ending of the relaxation on UK drivers’ working hours

In July of last year, the government of the United Kingdom passed a law according to which drivers were allowed to work 1 hour more than the maximum working hour limit for two times in a week. Simultaneously, this law allowed drivers to have shorter rest periods. While this law was meant to be temporary and was scheduled to end by 8th of August, it got postponed several times until the winter of this year. Starting now, this law has been officially put to an end. Drivers are not allowed to work more hours a day than it is legally permitted and their rest period cannot be shorter than what is stated in the laws.