Who the Working Time Regulations apply to


The regulations apply to workers not just employees. They cover any individual who works under a contract personally to perform work or services for another, except for those individuals who are genuinely in business on their own account and are in a client or customer relationship with the other party. Thus, for example, the Working Time Regulations (WTR) protect agency workers, apprentices, casual workers, and any workers in false “self-employment” arrangements (see Chapter 1). Interns are covered provided they are “workers”.


Following a series of amendments, groups previously excluded from the regulations are now included. The Working Time (Amendment) Regulations 2003 implemented the so-called “European Horizontal Amending Directive”. The UK regulations now include “non-mobile workers” in most of the previously “excluded” sectors, such as air, road and rail transport and offshore work. This means, for example, that clerical workers in these sectors are now fully covered.