Table of Contents
In Short
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Employees working at least 3 hours between 11 pm and 6 am are classified as night workers.
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Night workers must not exceed an average of 8 hours’ work in a 24-hour period and are entitled to a 20-minute rest break during shifts over 6 hours.
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Employers must offer free health assessments to night workers before they start night duties and at regular intervals thereafter.
Tips for Businesses
Ensure compliance with night work regulations by identifying night workers and monitoring their working hours. Offer and document health assessments, and keep records for at least two years. While not mandatory, consider providing extra pay for night shifts to support employee well-being.
Night work plays a crucial role in numerous industries and business operations. Under UK employment law, specific regulations and entitlements apply to workers who work at least three hours between 11 pm and 6 am. These rules will apply regardless of whether your employees are permanent full-time, part-time or casual workers alike. If you fail to provide these minimum entitlements to your night workers, you could face a dispute in the employment tribunal. Therefore, this article explains your legal obligations as an employer to your night workers to ensure they receive their entitlements.
What is a Night Worker?
A night worker is any person who works:
- between 11 pm and 6 am (the ‘night period’); and
- for a minimum of 3 hours.
A night worker can include your full-time, part-time and casual workers. However, you might also have a collective agreement in place that defines some of your staff as night workers even if they do not work during the ‘night period’. For this reason, it is essential to check any collective agreements you have in place to decide whether you owe your night work staff additional entitlements.
Working Hours for Night Work
Similar to other staff, night workers are entitled to the standard limits on working hours and rest breaks.
Therefore, night workers should:
- not work for more than 48 hours a week unless they have opted out of this limit by a written agreement;
- have a rest break of 20 minutes in any shift of 6 hours or more; and
- have a rest period between shifts, which is 24 hours on any 7-day work period and 48 hours on 14 14-day work period.
Exceptions to the Maximum Number of Night Work Hours
There are exceptions to the rule regarding the number of hours your nighttime staff can work. However, whether these exceptions apply depends on your particular industry. For example, for domestic staff in a private house and those in the emergency services, the rule that limits their maximum weekly work does not apply.
Also, there are some occasions where the rules will not apply, such as:
- where an emergency or accident has occurred;
- where a busy peak period arises, which is standard in the industry;
- in a role where you require your staff to be on-site for 24 hours;
- where an agreement is in place which states otherwise; and
- for staff who work in varied places or travel far from home to work.
Rest Breaks
As stated, most night workers are entitled to the same number of rest breaks as other staff. Generally, your employees are entitled to a 20-minute rest break in any shift of 6 hours or more. However, there are exceptions depending on what industry you operate in. However, you might alternatively offer ‘compensatory rest’ to your night workers. Compensatory rest should be at least a period of time equal to the additional time spent working and not equal to the length of the interrupted rest period.
Health Assessments for Night Work
Additionally, you must offer your night workers a free health assessment before they perform night-time work.
A qualified professional should oversee this health assessment at regular intervals and could, for example, include a comprehensive questionnaire. You should keep a record of the date of each time you offer a health assessment.
While your staff are not obliged to take this assessment, you should provide it, given that stress levels tend to increase during night work.
For example, this could apply to pregnant women already working at night. In this case, you could mutually agree to remove their nighttime duties and offer a suitable alternative role with the same terms and conditions.
Paying Your Night Workers
Your night workers are entitled to the National Minimum Wage. However, employers will often pay their nighttime workers more to honour their efforts. Increased pay can increase employee satisfaction, particularly where nighttime work is more physically and mentally taxing than working during daytime hours.
Beyond monetary benefits, you should also consider offering a sleep-in shift. A sleep-in shift is where your staff spend time sleeping during their night shift with the sleeping facilities you provide. If they spend most of their time sleeping and only wake for specific tasks, you are obliged to pay them for the hours they are awake to perform them. However, you must pay them for all their shift hours where they spend most of the time working during a sleep-in shift, but can sleep between tasks.
This factsheet outlines key developments in 2025 affecting workforce management. In particular, the proposed Employment Rights Bill (2024) will drive significant changes, anticipated to start late 2025.
Younger Workers
Generally, young people who are over the compulsory school age but under 18 cannot work between 10 pm and 6 am. Where a worker is obliged to work after 10 pm, the period between 11 pm and 7 am applies instead. This means that, in general, young workers cannot be night workers. That being said, specific industries are an exception to this. For example, you may require a young worker to work a night shift when no adult can, and you require them to either
- help cover a sudden demand for a product or service; or
- ensure that the service or production can remain continuous, such as where filming occurs.
Some examples of industries this applies to are:
- agriculture;
- activities concerned with culture, sport, art or advertising;
- catering and the hotel industry;
- retail;
- hospital work; and
- delivery of post or newspapers.
Where the exception applies, and you ask young workers to work as night workers, you must ensure that you still comply with any rest break entitlements.
Key Takeaways
If any of your staff are night workers, they enjoy many of the same entitlements as your daytime staff in terms of hours worked and breaks. However, different rules will apply. For example, within 24 hours, night-time workers should not work for more than an average of 8 hours. While you are not obligated to pay your night workers more than the National Minimum Wage, their pay can vary if they are sleep-in shift night workers. In addition, the rules for night workers can vary depending on what industry they work in.
If you need help understanding nighttime work in England and Wales, our experienced employment lawyers can assist as part of our LegalVision membership. For a low monthly fee, you will have unlimited access to lawyers to answer your questions and draft and review your documents for a low monthly fee. So call us today on 0808 196 8584 or visit our membership page.
Frequently Asked Questions
A night worker is a person who works for a minimum of 3 hours between 11 pm and 6 am. Additionally, workers can be considered to be night workers if they work night hours on a regular basis, such as working night hours on most days they work.
As an employer, you must offer all your night workers free health assessments, which a qualified health professional should conduct. However, your staff are not obliged to take the assessment
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