Under normal circumstances, the maximum is 48 hours a week. The exceptions include:
- workers who have signed an 'opt-out' agreement;
- the genuinely self-employed, who can work whatever hours they like.
The European Commission is working on updating working time legislation, and one of the areas on which it is concentrating is the 'opt-out', where it is seeking changes to provide workers with more protection against being pressurised into signing away their rights to a 48-hour maximum working week.
Under a deal with the EU, the UK has agreed that the opt-out will be retained in future, but the opt-out will have to be renewed annually, opt-outs signed within the first four weeks of employment are void, workers can withdraw within six months of signing, or on two months' notice, and a maximum 60-hour working week will apply to opted-out workers, calculated as an average over three months (unless a worker's on-call time is treated as working time, in which case the limit is 65 hours). There will be an exception for short-term workers on contracts of less than ten weeks, who may work up to 78 hours per week. As yet, no date for introduction of the new rules has been set.
