Holiday Entitlement

[lankeela]

Is there any law that says when you have to take your holiday entitlement i.e. if you get four weeks can they make you take a week off at Christmas? What about Bank Holidays?

[Buenchico]

The only legal requirement is that you must recive 28 days paid holiday per year. That figure assumes that you work a 5 day week. (The actual calculation is 5.6 times the number of days you work each week, capped at 28 days in total. The actual total number of days in 2009 is only 27 because there were 3 months under the 'old' rules, before the current rules took effect).

An employer is free to determine when employees take their holidays (subject to providing adequate notice of those dates). Public holidays have no special status in employment law.

So (assuming that you normally work on a Friday), your employer can insist that you work on Christmas Day this yerar, at your normal rate of pay (and discipline you if you fail to turn up). Further, your employer can allocate your 28 days holiday next year so that youu're forced to take the last bit of November, and the whole of December, off (with not a single day of holiday for the rest of the year). Or he can allocate 28 single random days throughout the year (so that you never get a full week off at any time). It's all perfectly legal (unless, of course, you've got a contract which specifies otherwise). As long as you're given 28 days paid holiday, the employer has met his legal obligations.

Chris

[factor-fiction]

Good answer from Chris.
Teachers, for example, don't get any choice as to when they take holidays.
If your company shuts at Christmas for a week i'd expect them to require you to take that time as holidays.

[Androcles]

As Chris says, "unless you have a contract....."

Most employers will have some contractual conditions around taking holidays and these will often concentrate on dealing with the issues of running a business such as continuity of cover, where the contactual term will often relate to taking holiday with the employer's agreement. It may also specify that, say two weeks, must be taken together another means of trying to simplify cover.

Frequency of absence may also be a problem in some businesses so you may find a condition which limits the number of single days which may be taken. At the other extrme, in order to balance fairness with cover, the contract may specify that a maximum of, say three weeks, may be taken together, so as to stop somebody grabbing a particular peak time, so others can't take it, with all the emotions that that can arouse!

Another issue is often related to shut downs when the premises are closed, and the contract may specify that holiday is reserved for that. In my experience, having done that, employers often then find that they need people in over the shutdown, for example engineers on maintenance, or accountants at Christmas/ New Year to complete the year end accounts, and have to start making special agreements.

So read your own contract very carefully!!

[tamborine]

If your business is open/working during public holidays, that should be written into a contract as a work day and alternative time off in lieu agreed. Usually, such days are worked on a rota system with others.