If you are not on Daylight Savings Time, Eastern Standard Time is 5 hours earlier than Universal Time, which is the local 'civil' time measured in England and all other locations in that time zone. If you are on Daylight Savings Time, your local time is 4 hours earlier. Example in the winter, your local time in New York is 8:00 AM. The Universal Time for this time zone is 8:00 AM + 5 hours = 1:00 PM or 13:00 . If it is the summer and you are on daylight savings time which is one hour ahead of the local zone time so the 8:00 AM DST is actually 7:00 Eastern Standard Time and so Universal Time = 7:00 + 5 hours = 12:00 noon or 12:00. On DST, add 4 hours to get UT if you are normally on Eastern Standard Time.