Important clarification on tacho 28-day manual entries

Clarification was recently sought by RHA members, via the DVSA, on what the fine print of the rules are. Under the original guidance, many hauliers were under the impression that manual entries would need to be done by drivers for every 24 hours, even on rest days. After conversations between relevant authorities and RHA members, we can confirm that is not the case.

Nigel Cook, MD of Elddis Transport (Consett) Ltd, said: “We couldn’t understand the logic of the guidance originally, obviously we understand manual entries still need to be done. But what we couldn’t understand was that it seemed every driver needed to do an entry every single 24hrs, and that they couldn’t do a block entry.

“One of our drivers even stopped at a roadside checkpoint at Scotch Corner to query this. Surely tacho allows you to do block entries for rest, no? We weren’t sure, so got in touch with the DVSA.”

The following information is directly from the policy team at the DVSA, so drivers may wish to keep this for evidence or support if they find themselves in a situation with any relevant authorities. They said: “There is no need for a driver to record every single 24-hour period individually. If a driver is on rest from the Friday to the Monday morning, they can enter that as one block of rest. The same would apply to daily rest, so a driver finishes at 17:00hrs on a Monday and is on rest until 06:00hrs the next day, then they can record all that period under one block of rest.”

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