---
source: policy_docs
audience: tenant
title: Overtime and Working Time
---

# What counts as overtime

Overtime is time worked beyond the scheduled end of a shift. It begins at the
scheduled end, not at the point the worker expected to leave, and it is recorded
in fifteen-minute blocks rounded up.

Time spent waiting to be released at the end of an event is working time. A
worker held back to clear a room is on overtime from the scheduled end, whether
or not they were serving.

# Approval

Overtime beyond thirty minutes needs a supervisor's approval at the time it is
worked. Approval after the fact is possible but is the exception, and a venue
where most overtime is approved retrospectively is a venue with a rota problem
rather than an approval problem.

A supervisor may approve up to two hours. Beyond that needs the venue manager.

# Weekly limits and rest

No worker is scheduled beyond 48 hours in a week averaged over 17 weeks. A
worker may opt out in writing and may withdraw that opt-out with seven days'
notice.

There must be eleven consecutive hours between the end of one shift and the
start of the next. A shift ending at 2am cannot be followed by one starting
before 1pm the same day. The rota should not offer it; if it does, the offer is
declined without prejudice to the worker.

A break of twenty minutes applies to any shift over six hours, taken away from
the service floor and not at the end of the shift.

# When overtime is climbing

Sustained overtime is a rota signal, not an individual one. Where overtime per
scheduled shift has risen for several weeks running, the venue manager reviews
headcount for that role before approving further overtime — the cheapest hour of
overtime is still more expensive than the shift that should have been rostered.