The 45-hour rest you cannot take in the cab

Ask around a truckstop and you will still find drivers who think a weekly rest in the bunk is fine as long as the handbrake is on. It has not been fine for years, and the rule is tighter and more specific than most people realise.

This is one of those bits of compliance that sounds like paperwork until it is a roadside check. It is worth ten minutes.

What the rules actually say

The government's guidance for goods vehicle drivers, last updated on 1 July 2026, is blunt about it. On regular weekly rest it says: "It is not permitted to take regular weekly rest periods" in a vehicle. The same restriction covers "any weekly rest of more than 45 hours which include compensation for previous reduced weekly rest in a vehicle."

The lengths matter here, because the two kinds of weekly rest are treated completely differently.

A regular weekly rest is "a period of rest of at least 45 continuous hours". A reduced weekly rest is "a rest period of at least 24 but less than 45 continuous hours".

So the forty-five is the line. Below it, the cab is on the table. At or above it, it is not.

Reduced weekly rest is the exception

The guidance is equally clear the other way: "Reduced weekly rest periods may be taken in a vehicle."

Two conditions come with it. The vehicle has to be stationary, which is obvious once you think about why — a driver in a moving vehicle is not freely disposing of their time, which is what rest means. And the vehicle is expected to have "suitable sleeping facilities for each driver".

That phrase does real work, and it is not a matter of opinion.

"Suitable" has a definition

Suitable sleeping facilities are described as "a bunk or other type of bed which is primarily designed for sleeping on."

Primarily designed for sleeping on. Seats folded flat are not a bed. A mattress thrown across the engine tunnel is not a bed. If the cab does not have a proper bunk, the reduced weekly rest does not belong in it either, and the answer is accommodation.

Somebody else pays for that

This is the part drivers most often do not know, and it is stated plainly: "Cost for accommodation outside the vehicle must be met by the employer."

Not the driver. If the rules push a rest out of the cab and into a bed somewhere, that is an operating cost of the business, not a deduction from a night out allowance. Worth knowing before the conversation rather than during it.

They are the assimilated rules now

A small thing that trips people up when they go looking.

The guidance no longer calls these the EU rules. Post-Brexit they are the assimilated rules, and gov.uk has retitled the pages accordingly. Older write-ups, including a lot of what comes up first in a search, still talk about EU rules and in some cases still describe the position before 2020, when taking a full weekly rest in the cab was tolerated in practice.

If you are checking something, make sure the page you are reading is the current assimilated version. The rule changed, the naming changed, and plenty of secondary material has not caught up with either.

Where that leaves you on a Friday afternoon

Here is the practical bind. The rules assume there is somewhere to go. For a regular weekly rest that is not your own yard or your own house, the options are a truckstop with a room, a hotel, or a long drive back empty.

For a reduced weekly rest in a compliant cab, you still need somewhere to put the vehicle for at least twenty-four hours, which is a different proposition from an overnight. Plenty of places that will take a lorry for a night will not take one for a weekend, and finding that out on the Friday is how drivers end up in laybys.

Plan the weekly one earlier than you plan the daily ones. It needs a place that will have you for the whole period, somewhere you can leave the vehicle safely while you are not in it, and ideally somewhere you are not paying a nightly premium three times over.

The honest summary

Forty-five hours or more, compensation rest included, does not happen in the vehicle. Twenty-four to forty-five can, if the cab has a proper bunk and the vehicle is stationary. If it does not, accommodation is the answer and the employer picks up the bill.

The harder part is not the rule, it is finding the space. If you need somewhere for a weekly rest on a run you do regularly, post what you need on the Parking wanted board and let yard owners near that route come to you. It is free to use for your first 12 months, with no booking fees.

https://hgv-parking.co.uk/requirements