Working Time (Amendment) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2003 - S.r. No. 119

Notice is hereby given that the Department for Employment and Learning, being a Department designated for the purposes of section 2(2) of the European Communities Act 1972 in relation to measures relating to the organisation of working time and measures relating to the employment of children and young persons, in exercise of the powers conferred on it by the said section 2(2) and of every other power enabling it in that behalf, has made a statutory rule entitled the Working Time (Amendment) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2003.

These Regulations amend provisions of the Working Time Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1998, primarily in order to implement certain provisions of Council Directive 94/33/EC on the protection of young people at work (O.J. No. L216, 20.8.94 p. 12). The provisions in question restrict the working time of adolescents – those aged between 15 and 18 who are over compulsory school age, referred to as ‘young workers’ – and the circumstances in which they may work during night-time.

Some sectors (including hospitals or similar establishments, agriculture, retail trading, hotels or catering businesses, bakeries, fisheries and postal or newspaper deliveries) are exempted from the night working restrictions because of their particular operational needs.

The Regulations also include two amendments to the 1998 Regulations that are unrelated to Council Directive 94/33/EC but were included in an Article 226 letter which questioned our guidance on the limits on night time working hours. Regulation 6 amends the definition of “excluded days”, a term used in the formula for calculating a worker’s average weekly working time, so as to include periods of paternity, adoption or parental leave. Regulation 8 revokes a provision excluding overtime from the calculation of a night worker’s normal hours of work in certain cases.

The Regulations come into operation on 6th April, 2003.

Printed copies of the Regulations are available from the Stationery Office Bookshop ISBN 0-337- 94946-8, priced £2.00.