Three regimes, and you are probably in two of them
The first question is never “what are the limits” but “which rules am I under”. In Great Britain there are three answers and most operators touch more than one.
Assimilated EU rules
Retained Regulation (EC) 561/2006 covers most goods vehicles over 3.5 t and passenger vehicles built for more than nine people. These are the rules people mean when they say “tachograph rules”: 4.5 hours of driving, then a 45-minute break.
AETR
Mirrors the assimilated rules on international work between Great Britain and Europe. In practice the driving and rest limits are the same; the paperwork obligations are what change.
GB domestic rules
A narrower set covering goods vehicles that fall outside the assimilated rules, with a long list of exemptions. If your vehicle is over 3.5 t and used commercially, assume the assimilated rules apply until you have checked a genuine exemption on GOV.UK.
Guessing which regime applies is how operators end up running without a tachograph on a vehicle that needed one. The Working Time Regulations 2005 apply on top of drivers’ hours, covering loading, paperwork and training — both run at once.
Why the roadside window doubled
This is the single change most likely to catch out a compliant operator. On international journeys between the UK and the EU, a driver must now be able to produce the current day plus the previous 56 days of records and manual entries — twice the old window, brought in to align domestic law with the UK–EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement, Interbus and AETR.
What this means in practice
A card download you missed two months ago is still inside the window today. A corrupted download, a driver who forgot a manual entry after a ferry crossing, a vehicle unit that logged a motion conflict — all of it remains producible evidence for eight weeks rather than four.
What has not changed
Download intervals are unchanged: driver cards at least every 28 days, vehicle units at least every 90 days, and a vehicle unit must be downloaded before the vehicle is sold, un-hired or passed on. Miss a 28-day window and you have a gap the moment the DVSA asks.
The fine is not the problem
The DVSA enforces at the roadside and through remote audits, issuing more than 20,000 fixed penalty notices for tachograph offences in a typical year. Graduated fixed penalties run from about £50 to over £300 per offence, and a driver can be issued several at once.
That is the visible cost. The consequential one is different: a pattern of missing downloads, unexplained gaps or uninvestigated infringements is exactly what triggers a referral to the Traffic Commissioner. At a public inquiry the questions are not about a single day’s driving — they are about whether your systems work at all. The Commissioner can curtail your vehicle authorisation, suspend the licence or revoke it, and can disqualify the transport manager.
What inspectors actually look for
Not perfection. They look for evidence that infringements were detected, investigated and acted on. An operator who can show a signed infringement report and a driver debrief is in a fundamentally different position from one who simply stored the files and never opened them.
Does the 2.5-tonne rule hit you?
From 1 July 2026 goods vehicles with a maximum authorised mass over 2.5 t — including any trailer — need a smart tachograph version 2 when used for hire and reward on international journeys between the UK and the EU. The DVSA confirmed this under the Trade and Cooperation Agreement.
In scope
Paid carriage of goods over 2.5 t crossing between the UK and the EU. You will also need a standard international goods vehicle operator licence for vans over 2.5 t working for hire or reward in the EU, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland.
Out of scope
Vans that never cross a border remain under GB domestic drivers’ hours rules and need no tachograph. Own-account transport — your own goods, where driving is not the driver’s main activity — may be exempt. Vehicles under 2.5 t MAM are unaffected either way.
Note the trap: the threshold is the maximum authorised mass including the trailer, not how the vehicle is registered. A 3.2 t van towing a plant trailer is a different vehicle in law from the same van running empty.
What a public inquiry actually punishes
In July 2026 an operator in the East of England had its licence cut from 12 vehicles to 8 — a third of the fleet gone — after one of its drivers repeatedly pulled his card and kept driving. On one day the driver covered nearly 200 km in 2 hours 44 minutes with no card inserted, then logged the stretch as a break. On another he recorded over ten hours of driving with a single 20-minute break.
Operating in the EU as well? The same liability principle applies there under Article 10(3) — see who pays when a driver breaks the rules.
The driver lost his vocational entitlement. But read what the Traffic Commissioner held against the operator — because none of it is about the driver’s behaviour:
Incomplete downloads
Tachograph data was not being pulled in full, so the missing driving never became visible in the office.
No documented procedures
No written disciplinary or monitoring procedures — nothing showing that infringements were investigated and acted on.
Verbal-only training
Driver training happened but was never recorded. Training you cannot evidence counts for very little at an inquiry.
Repeat infringements ignored
The same problems recurred without being addressed — precisely the pattern that turns a fine into a licence review.
The sentence every transport manager should read twice
The inquiry heard that tachograph infringements went unnoticed after the office manager left the company and nobody else knew how to use the monitoring systems.
Compliance that lives in one person’s head is not compliance. It is a single point of failure with an Operator Licence attached to it.
On top of the curtailment, the operator was ordered to commission an independent audit of its compliance systems at its own cost, with the report due to the licensing authority by January 2027. The remedies it then introduced — more frequent downloads, a driver disciplinary points system, 28-day licence checks and documented training — are simply what should have been in place from the start.
Based on the Traffic Commissioner’s written decision effective 14 July 2026, as reported by Trans.INFO. Names omitted here; the decision itself is public.
What a compliant month looks like
Download on schedule
Cards every 28 days, units every 90. Set the reminder to 21 and 75 days so a driver on holiday does not push you over.
Evaluate, do not just archive
Run the data against drivers’ hours and working time limits. Storing files is not compliance; the obligation is to know what is in them.
Debrief the driver
Every infringement gets a written report and a signed acknowledgement. This is the document that answers the Traffic Commissioner’s question.
Keep it producible for 56 days
Records and manual entries for international work must be available on demand for the full window — in the vehicle, not only on the office server.
TAGRA reads data from any digital or smart tachograph regardless of country, evaluates it against drivers’ hours and working time rules, produces the infringement reports you can hand to a driver, and keeps the archive you have to produce on demand. Windows, no cloud dependency, your data stays with you. Try it free for 30 days — no card details required.
Frequently asked questions
How many days of data must a driver produce at a roadside check?
On international journeys between the UK and the EU, the current day plus the previous 56 days of records and manual entries. Domestic GB work follows the 28-day rule.
Do vans between 2.5 and 3.5 tonnes need a tachograph in the UK?
Only on international hire-and-reward journeys between the UK and the EU, from 1 July 2026, where a smart tachograph version 2 is required. Vans operating solely within the UK stay under GB domestic drivers’ hours rules and need no tachograph.
What do DVSA penalties cost?
Graduated fixed penalties typically run from around £50 to over £300 per offence, and more than 20,000 are issued for tachograph offences each year. The larger risk is referral to the Traffic Commissioner, who can curtail, suspend or revoke an Operator Licence.
How often must cards and vehicle units be downloaded?
Driver cards at least every 28 days, vehicle units at least every 90 — the same intervals as in the EU. A vehicle unit must also be downloaded before the vehicle is sold, un-hired or transferred.
Where do I check a specific fault code?
The codes themselves are identical everywhere. See tachograph fault codes and symbols explained for what motion conflict 80, internal GNSS fault 82, internal DSRC fault 84 and the rest mean, and what to do about each one.