In Alpha Catering Services v Gallagher [2005] IRLR 102, the Court of Appeal ruled that the focus should be on the activities of the worker, not the employer. Employers cannot, for example, under-staff to avoid giving workers the right to breaks. A period of “downtime” when a worker is allowed to stop working but must remain in contact with the employer is not a rest break, even if it turns out at the end of the break that it was uninterrupted.