Rest break checker and planner

The in-shift break: one block, in the middle

Once an adult works more than 6 hours, they are entitled to an uninterrupted 20-minute rest break. Two things about that sentence do the work.

Uninterrupted means one block. Two ten-minute breaks do not satisfy regulation 12, even though a manager splitting a break in half is usually trying to be flexible rather than trying to save money.

And the break has to fall during the working period. A break tacked onto the start or the end is a later start or an early finish, not rest. Workers are also entitled to spend it away from their workstation, which is why a break spent behind the bar with the radio on does not count.

Daily rest: the 11-hour gap

There must be 11 consecutive hours between the end of one shift and the start of the next. A midnight close means no start before 11am. This is the rule that hospitality rotas break most often, and almost always by accident: the close and the open are built by different people, or on different days, and nobody looks at the gap between them.

Weekly rest: 24 hours, or 48 a fortnight

Adults get 24 uninterrupted hours off each week, or 48 hours every fortnight. Six days in a row is workable. Seven is not, and a pattern of six-day weeks with the day off drifting can quietly produce a stretch of twelve consecutive days.

Under-18s are a different regime

Young workers get a 30-minute break after 4.5 hours, 12 hours of daily rest and 48 hours of weekly rest, normally as two consecutive days. They also cannot normally work more than 8 hours a day or 40 a week, and unlike adults they cannot opt out of any of it. A sixth-former on a Saturday shift is on a stricter rota than the rest of the team, and no signature changes that.

Sector exceptions vary rest, they do not remove it

Shift changeovers, security work requiring a permanent presence, and continuous-service activities such as care and hospitality can vary daily and weekly rest. In every case the worker must receive equivalent compensatory rest instead. The exception is a timing flexibility, not a discount, and treating it as a discount is how a defensible rota becomes an indefensible one.