Self-employed drivers

Self-employed drivers are in the scope of Directive 2002/15/EC and in 2012 the European Commission withdrew a proposal to remove them. The RTR regulations and corresponding Northern Ireland regulations were amended and since 11 May 2012 self-employed drivers have been covered. It was an outcome the unions campaigned for, removing an incentive that would otherwise have existed for employers to switch employed drivers to self-employed status.

The RTR road transport regulations use a narrower definition of self-employment than the Employment Rights Act 1996/WTR. They cover drivers entitled to work for themselves and not tied to an employer by an employment contract or by any other type of working hierarchical relationship, free to organise the relevant working activities, whose income depends directly on the profits made and who has the freedom, individually or through a co-operation between self-employed drivers, to have commercial relations with several customers (RTR regulation 2).