Young workers: maximum daily hours

The hours a worker under 18 may not work beyond in a single day, counting every employer's hours together, with no opt-out.

8hours

Primary source only Statutory Instrument Great Britain in force since 2003-04-06

Checked against its sources: statute verified 2026-09-21

Scope: Eight hours a day for a young worker, and there is NO individual opt-out — unlike the adult's 48-hour week, which regulation 5 lets a worker agree out of. Regulation 27A(1) disapplies regulation 5A where the work is needed to maintain continuity of service or production or to meet a surge in demand, no adult worker is available and the young worker's education would not suffer. The weekly limb is Young workers: maximum weekly hours; a young worker's night work is prohibited outright by regulation 6A rather than limited.

Current sources

Source A · Legislationhttps://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2002/3128/made (SI 2002/3128 reg 6: "The following regulation shall be inserted after regulation 5-" a new regulation 5A whose paragraph (1) reads "A young worker's working time shall not exceed- (a) eight hours a day, or (b) 40 hours a week"; in force 6 April 2003, reg 1)

retrieved 2026-09-08

History

Value	From	To	Status	Sources
8	2003-04-06	—	Primary source only	Legislation: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2002/3128/made (SI 2002/3128 reg 6: "The following regulation shall be inserted after regulation 5-" a new regulation 5A whose paragraph (1) reads "A young worker's working time shall not exceed- (a) eight hours a day, or (b) 40 hours a week"; in force 6 April 2003, reg 1) retrieved 2026-09-08

Receipt

Everything above is reproducible and independently checkable — no trust in this site required (how verification works).

Figure ID: employment.working_time.young_worker.max_daily_hours
Name in the API: Young worker: maximum daily working time
Record fields (source type · unit · jurisdiction · status): si·hours·GB·single_source_A
Record hash (canonical JSON, SHA-256): sha256:2327ff15052291580cd37fdb1fd95f44f59d5d4952d918054e91f51d02113fbe
Source snapshots (SHA-256): Legislation: sha256:b7ef578a6d4a447e923d4103be8af9747ce23a98382d5dd16d538d437d5d1ad0
Listed in the signed manifest: release 3.0.0 manifest · record_hashes["employment.working_time.young_worker.max_daily_hours"]
Machine-readable record: /v1/figures/employment.working_time.young_worker.max_daily_hours · current only: /v1/figures/employment.working_time.young_worker.max_daily_hours/current

Compiler's notes

An SI carry (ADR-0014): SI 2002/3128 reg 6 INSERTED regulation 5A whole, so there is no value-level substitution for NF-1 to re-derive and the inserted text carries no provision ids in the amender's own document. The evidence is the pair: the 1998 Regulations' current view and SI 2002/3128 as made, both hashed and recomputed at Gate 2. Nothing preceded this value: before 6 April 2003 the Regulations set no limit on a young worker's hours at all. The locator token is "eight hours a day" and not the host's run-together serialisation of paragraph (1), because a token has to satisfy the setter's document too.