Employing Children
The Rules

Employing Children

The rules which apply to the employment of children are:-

• Child: defined as a person aged under the minimum school leaving age. Young person: defined as a person aged under 18 but over the minimum school leaving age.
• Children are prohibited from working in factories, transport, merchant ships, constructions sites, and mines. Maybe additional local authority by-laws (e.g. regulating street trading).
• Employers wishing to employ a child under the minimum school leaving age must obtain a local authority permit.
• Children aged under 14: May only work in the following areas: sports participation, babysitting, entertainment such as TV, film & stage work, modelling, advertising, and errands for parents, other relatives, and neighbours, etc.
• Hours of work – the rules which apply are:-
  • prohibited from working during school hours
  • no more than 2 hours on a school day (i.e. which must be outside school hours) and no more than 12 hours maximum during a school week
  • 2 hours maximum on Sundays
  • no more than 8 hours (5 hours for the under 15’s) on non-school days except Sundays where the maximum is 2 hours and no more than 35 hours (25 hours for the under 15’s) per week during non-school weeks
  • prohibited from working before 7am or after 7pm
  • prohibited from working more than 4 hours at any one time without a break of 1 hour.
  • must have 2 uninterrupted weeks of holiday (i.e. without working) from school each year
• Children under the minimum school leaving age are not entitled to holiday pay or to be paid the national minimum wage
• Children may babysit a child of any age so long as it is looked after properly. The parents of the child babysitter could face prosecution should it be found that it is not and the child babysitter could even be placed in care should that be the case.