When it comes to bank holidays, the Working Time Regulations 1998 does not differentiate between them and any other days, meaning that they can lawfully be included in an employee’s 5.6-week minimum annual leave entitlement.
Additionally, employees do not have a statutory right to leave for a bank holiday. Therefore, unless an employer makes it a contractual right, should an employee refuse to attend work, the employer is entitled to deal with it as a disciplinary issue.
Equally, however, if an employee’s contract is worded to entitle them to take bank holidays as leave, an employer cannot then insist that the employee attends work. In this case, an employer would likely have to consider alternative arrangements such as seeking the employees written agreement to work and may consider an incentive such as extra pay.
Part-time employees
The majority of bank holidays generally fall on either a Monday or a Friday, which may mean if you have an employee who works part-time and not on these days, that they may be entitled to fewer days off compared with their full-time counterparts.
Employers need to ensure that holiday entitlement policies do not allow for part-time employees to be treated less favourably. It may be that to avoid any future complaints by part-time employees, an employer provides employees with a pro-rata public holiday entitlement.
Contract wording
Dependent on the wording of an employee’s contract, the employer may run the risk that employees receive more or less bank holidays in any given year.
This is particularly an issue where the holiday year runs from April to March, as it may be that subject to when the Easter weekend falls, the employee may receive as many as ten bank holidays in one year and as few as six in the next year. Which interestingly was the case in 2024 (where Good Friday fell on 29 March and Easter Monday on 1 April 2024).
Furthermore, it may be that the wording of employee’s contracts does not allow a right to leave in instances where an additional bank holiday is granted by the government, for example to celebrate King Charles’ coronation. However, it may be that employers chose to grant the additional day as a good will gesture.
If you are a business who wants advice surrounding your current practices and contractual entitlement, please do get in touch with our specialist employment law team on 0161 696 6170.
Comments