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The working-time records UK employers must keep (and for how long)

· David Peralta

Most small employers know the headline rules — the 48-hour week, 5.6 weeks' holiday, the minimum wage. Fewer know that the law also requires you to keep records proving you follow them, that different records have different retention clocks — and that as of 6 April 2026, the list got longer: keeping holiday records is now a statutory duty in its own right. Here's the plain-English version.

This is general information, not legal advice — for specific situations, speak to Acas or an employment solicitor.

Working-time records: adequate records, kept two years

The Working Time Regulations 1998 (regulation 9) require employers to keep records “adequate to show” compliance with the key limits:

  • the 48-hour average working week (normally averaged over 17 weeks);
  • the stricter limits for young workers (no more than 8 hours a day / 40 hours a week for under-18s);
  • night-work limits and the health assessments offered to night workers.

Those records must be kept for two years from the date they were made. Helpfully, the regulations don't prescribe a format — you can keep them “in such manner and format as the employer reasonably thinks fit”, and you don't have to log every worker's hours daily if you can show compliance another way. In practice, though, a reliable record of hours worked is the only evidence that stands up when a dispute or an HSE query arrives years later.

If any of your staff have signed a 48-hour opt-out, keep the signed agreements too — an opt-out you can't produce is an opt-out you can't rely on.

Minimum-wage records: six years

Separately, minimum-wage law requires records “sufficient to establish” that every worker is paid at least the National Minimum/Living Wage for each pay reference period. Since 1 April 2021 these must be kept for six years (up from three). For hourly-paid staff that means hours actually worked, not just what the rota said. Failing to keep sufficient records is a criminal offence — as is faking them.

Notice the mismatch: working-time records for two years, pay records for six. Since hours records are usually the evidence for pay compliance, the practical rule for hourly-paid staff is simple: keep hours records six years.

Holiday records: mandatory since April 2026 — six years

Until this year, regulation 9's record-keeping duty didn't cover annual leave — holiday records were merely what you'd need to survive a tribunal claim. That changed on 6 April 2026. A new regulation 16B (inserted into the Working Time Regulations by the Employment Rights Act 2025) requires employers to keep records adequate to show compliance with statutory holiday entitlement and holiday pay — leave accrued and taken, and how the pay for it was calculated, including variable elements like overtime and commission — and to retain them for six years. The format is up to you, but the duty isn't: regulation 29 was amended on the same date so that failing to keep adequate holiday records is now a criminal offence, carrying an unlimited fine. The new Fair Work Agency, which opened on 7 April 2026, has said it will prepare to begin holiday-pay enforcement in 2027 — so the liability is already live, and the inspections follow.

The calculation side matters as much as the diary side. For irregular-hours and part-year workers, leave years starting on or after 1 April 2024 use the 12.07%-of-hours-worked accrual method — which you cannot calculate, let alone evidence, without a per-period record of hours. And a worker's unlawful-deduction claim in Great Britain can still reach back up to two years of deductions on top of the new criminal exposure.

The practical checklist

For each worker, keep:

  1. Hours worked per day/week — retain six years (covers both regimes).
  2. Weekly average vs the 48-hour limit, and any signed opt-outs.
  3. Night-work hours and health-assessment offers, where relevant.
  4. Leave accrued, booked, taken and paid, per leave year — including the accrual basis for irregular-hours staff. Retain six years (regulation 16B).
  5. Pay per pay reference period against the applicable minimum-wage rate.

If that sounds like a filing cabinet, it doesn't have to be. TS@BigRock produces a daily working-time record and a per-worker leave statement (as at any date, PDF or Excel) — exactly the evidence the new regulation 16B duty calls for — automatically from the timesheets and leave bookings your team already enters, including 12.07% accrual for zero-hours staff, at £1 per user per month. See how it works.

Sources: gov.uk guidance on maximum weekly working hours; Working Time Regulations 1998, reg 9, reg 16B (inserted by the Employment Rights Act 2025, in force 6 April 2026 — see also Acas) and reg 29 (offences, amended 6 April 2026 to cover reg 16B(1)); National Minimum Wage Regulations 2015, reg 59 (as amended from 1 April 2021). Verified 21 August 2026.