Well I never thought I'd see the day that our trust was better in any respect than any other..! We have a thirty minute break which you have between the third and fifth hour of your 12 hour shift.. you have the choice to be available during the break for which if you say "yes" you get £5.. Control can only disturb the break for Catagory A calls.. for which you get an extra £20..! If you have your break disturbed before 20 minutes you get to go back and have a 30 minutes UNDISTURBED break... after 20 minutes you lose the rest.. IF you haven't had a break by the 5th hour, you get to go back to station UNAVAILABLE for any call whatsoever.. then have 30 undisturbed minutes. Our station being rural in nature we get dragged into the city where usually we get used and abused for 5 hours.. but then we drive back to station at the speed limits through the lunchtime traffic which can take an hour, so one and a half hours away from the dross.. most of the time it's straight back out. The second " rest period" however is 20 minutes between the 7th and 9th hours for which you don't get stood down for, you don't have to go back to station for and can be disturbed for any emergency call and you don't get any time owing.. invariably we don't get the second break.. and sometimes if we're still on station at 10am they'll put us on break and half hour later we'll be out for the rest of the shift, without stopping. All credit to the rest of you.. especially Tom and AmbuSam, there would be a revolt down here if your break policies were in action here..! They must be breaking Employment Law and I'd recommend you speak to the Unions.. One last thing.. Ambusam.. why did you go out 15 minutes before the start of your shift..? Were you covering the night crew or can they make you go out early..? If covering others then ok, otherwise screw that..!