The Working Time Regulations 1998 set a weekly limit, a set of rest entitlements and a holiday entitlement. At senior level, two of those three can fall away — and not by the route most people assume.
The limit is an average, not a ceiling
The limit is 48 hours a week on average, normally averaged over 17 weeks. It is not a cap on any individual week. A 70-hour week is not itself a breach, and whether a run of them is depends on the whole reference period.
Separately, workers are entitled to 5.6 weeks’ paid annual leave — 28 days for someone working a five-day week, capped at 28 days however many days a week they work. Keep that one in mind: it behaves differently from everything else here.
The opt-out, and what it requires
A worker can agree to exceed the 48-hour average. The conditions are specific:
- · It must be voluntary and in writing.
- · An employer may ask for it, but a worker cannot be sacked or treated unfairly for refusing.
- · It can be for a set period or indefinite.
- · To cancel it, a worker gives at least 7 days’ notice — or up to 3 months if the agreement says so.
That last pair is the detail worth knowing is in writing somewhere: the notice period to come back inside the limit is whatever the agreement specified, up to three months, and the agreement is often signed on day one along with everything else.
Regulation 20: the one that applies to senior roles
An opt-out presumes a limit that applies to you. For some senior roles it does not apply in the first place. Regulation 20 of the Working Time Regulations 1998 reads, in part:
“Regulations 4(1) and (2), 6(1), (2) and (7), 10(1), 11(1) and (2) and 12(1) do not apply in relation to a worker where, on account of the specific characteristics of the activity in which he is engaged, the duration of his working time is not measured or predetermined or can be determined by the worker himself, as may be the case for — (a) managing executives or other persons with autonomous decision-taking powers; (b) family workers; or (c) workers officiating at religious ceremonies in churches and religious communities.”
The regulations it switches off are, in order: the 48-hour weekly limit (regulation 4), the night work limits (6), daily rest (10), weekly rest (11) and rest breaks (12). So where it bites, there is no 48-hour average to opt out of, no entitlement to 11 hours’ rest between shifts and no entitlement to an in-work rest break.
What the exclusion turns on — and what it does not
The test is whether the duration of working time is unmeasured, not predetermined, or determined by the worker. That is a question about how the role actually works. It is not a question about job title, seniority or salary: the regulation says this “may be the case for” managing executives, which is an illustration rather than a category. A senior role with set hours, a rota or measured time is not excluded by regulation 20 merely because it is senior, and an employer asserting otherwise in a contract does not make it so.
Annual leave is not in the list. Regulation 20 disapplies regulations 4, 6, 10, 11 and 12. It does not touch regulation 13, so the 5.6 weeks’ paid holiday survives it — as does the separate protection for working time records.
What senior adverts actually say about hours
That is the law. Here is the practice, counted across the 1,898 roles on this board as it stands today.
| Source | Listings | State a working pattern |
|---|---|---|
| NHS Jobs | 1,069 | 1,069 (100.0%) |
| Private sector (employers’ own boards) | 829 | 0 (0.0%) |
Every role here that tells you its working pattern is a public-sector one. Of the 829 private-sector listings, none carries the field at all.
This is a measurement about adverts, not about employers
The asymmetry is partly a fact about the sources. NHS Jobs publishes a structured working-pattern field on every post; the applicant-tracking systems the private roles come from have no equivalent field, so the answer is missing rather than withheld. What that means in practice is the same for a reader — there is no answer — but it is not evidence that those employers are less flexible, and this page does not say it is. An advert that says nothing may belong to the most flexible employer in Britain. A job board can only see what was put in writing.
Where the private half mentions working arrangements at all, it does so in prose rather than in a field: “remote”, “hybrid” or “work from home” appears somewhere in 56 of 829 private-sector listings (6.8%). That is a weaker measurement than a field and can only undercount, because it reads the title, location and our own summary rather than the full advert.
Which patterns get named
Among the 1,069 listings that do state a pattern, 414 name something beyond plain full-time (38.7%). Plain “Full time” is the default rather than a concession, so it is not counted as one here.
- · Part time — 322 listings
- · Flexible working — 189 listings
- · Job-share — 49 listings
- · Compressed hours — 11 listings
- · Home or remote working — 8 listings
- · Annualised hours — 4 listings
- · Term time hours — 2 listings
A listing can name more than one, so these do not sum to the total.
Sources
The law on this page was last read against the primary sources on 6 October 2026. The listing figures recompute on every build and are current as of the date in the footer. Legislation changes; if you are reading this much later, check the source.
- · Working Time Regulations 1998, regulation 20 — unmeasured working time
- · Regulation 4 — maximum weekly working time and regulation 13 — annual leave
- · gov.uk — Maximum weekly working hours and opting out of the 48-hour week
- · gov.uk — Holiday entitlement
- · Working-pattern figures: this board’s own listings, recounted on each build
The guide · Flexible working: the right to request · The £100,000 tax trap