Sunday Trading Laws

In England and Wales, a large shop can open on a Sunday for six hours in a row, somewhere between 10am and 6pm, and must stay closed on Easter Sunday and Christmas Day. A large shop is one with a sales area of more than 280 square metres. Smaller shops can open whenever they like, and Scotland has no trading hours restrictions at all. The rules come from the Sunday Trading Act 1994.

The opening hours are only half of it. Shop workers also have a legal right to stop working on Sundays, and that right shapes your rota more often than the six-hour window does.

Which shops the hours apply to

The limits only bite on large shops: those with a relevant floor area over 280 square metres. A corner shop, a small boutique or a high-street café-shop below that size can trade on Sunday at any hour.

Some large shops are exempt even above 280 square metres. GOV.UK lists them, and they include:

• farm shops selling mainly their own produce;

• shops selling mainly alcohol;

• shops selling motor or cycle supplies and accessories;

• registered pharmacies, when they sell only medicinal products;

• shops at airports and railway stations;

• service station shops;

• stands at exhibitions.

Any large shop that trades on Sunday has to display its Sunday opening hours inside and outside the shop, and opening outside the permitted hours can lead to a fine (GOV.UK, trading hours for retailers).

Easter Sunday and Christmas Day

Easter Sunday is closed for large shops in England and Wales. Christmas Day is covered by a separate law, the Christmas Day (Trading) Act 2004: a large shop must not open on Christmas Day, whatever day of the week it falls on. For your December rota that means Christmas Day needs no shop-floor staff in a large store, while Boxing Day is an ordinary trading day for the Sunday rules unless it falls on a Sunday.

Scotland and Northern Ireland

Scotland has no Sunday trading hours restrictions, so a large Scottish shop can open all day. Northern Ireland has its own rules, the Shops (Sunday Trading &c.) (Northern Ireland) Order 1997, which also uses the 280 square metre threshold. A chain with stores across the UK therefore plans Sundays differently per country.

Shop workers can opt out of Sunday working

Shop workers in England, Wales and Scotland can opt out of working on Sundays (Employment Rights Act 1996, section 40). The rules on GOV.UK are short:

• Who: any shop or betting shop worker, unless they were employed to work only on Sundays.

• How: written notice to the employer, signed and dated, saying they object to Sunday working.

• Notice period: three months. It is one month if the employer did not give them a written statement about their right to opt out within two months of starting work.

• Protection: an employee cannot be dismissed or treated unfairly for opting out or refusing Sunday work (sections 45 and 101). Dismissal for that reason is automatically unfair.

During the notice period the employee can still be asked to work Sundays. Once it ends, Sunday is off the table for them. Employers only have to pay more for Sunday work if the contract says so (GOV.UK, Sunday working).

A Sunday in a large store, worked through

Take a 1,200 square metre homeware store in Leeds that trades from 10am to 4pm on Sundays. The doors are shut at 9am, but the delivery is in and the shelves need filling, so two people start at 8am. The tills open at 10am with six people on the floor. At 4pm the doors close; one supervisor and one colleague stay until 5pm to cash up and recover the floor. Nothing in the Sunday Trading Act stops that: the limit is on serving customers, and the working day around it follows the usual rules on working time and breaks.

Those usual rules still apply on a Sunday. Under the Working Time Regulations 1998 an adult worker is entitled to a 20-minute rest break when the working day is longer than six hours, so the two people on the 8am to 5pm shift need that break planned in. Of the six people on the till, the ones who have opted out of Sunday work are not on the list at all, and the ones still serving their notice period can be.

Telling new starters about the opt-out

The notice period a shop worker has to give depends on what you did when they joined. An employer who needs staff to work on Sundays must tell them in writing, within two months of their start date, that they can opt out. If you do, a worker who wants to stop working Sundays gives three months’ notice. If you do not, the notice period drops to one month. Building the written statement into your onboarding pack is the simplest way to keep the longer notice period, and it saves a difficult conversation later.

Keep a record of each opt-out: the date the notice came in, the date it ends and the date the employee started. That record is what tells you, three months from now, whether someone can still be rostered on a Sunday.

What the rules mean for your rota

The six-hour limit applies to serving customers, not to the people behind the scenes. A store that opens from 10am to 4pm on Sunday can still have staff in from 9am to restock and set up, and someone cashing up after 4pm. Plan those shifts as they are: a longer working day around a six-hour trading window.

Opt-outs are the bigger planning job. Keep track of who has opted out and from when their notice ends, so nobody is put on a Sunday they no longer have to work. In a team where several people have opted out, the Sunday shifts fall on fewer shoulders, and it pays to check that the same three people are not working every weekend.

In retail scheduling software such as Shiftbase, staff who no longer work Sundays can mark Sunday as unavailable, so it shows while you build the week. Whether a shift fits the Sunday trading rules in your country is something you check yourself.