Once upon a time, the Employment Elf noticed a funny thing.
The magical (United) Kingdom which usually blesses its subjects with eight bank holidays in a year had lost one! Where could it be?
Ahh yes, the last bank holiday of the year had tipped into April 2025 because we all had to wait a little longer to eat our chocolate Easter eggs this year.
Good Friday wasn’t until 18 April 2025. So, there would only be seven bank holidays if the happy workers had an holiday year that ran from 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025, and they were only entitled to the statutory minimum under the sparkly Working Time Regulations, that is, 28 days including bank holidays.
The responsible employers asked with concern to the Employment Elf – what should we do? So the Employment Elf unrolled the to-do list scroll which said the following:
- Check contracts and holiday policies to see if the holiday year runs from April to March and if any workers will be impacted
- If the employment contract states 28 days, including bank holidays, there’s no issue – employees still get their full entitlement. They will get the seven bank holidays off and will have 21 days to take at another time.
- If the employment contract states 20 days plus all bank holidays, there is a problem – affected workers would only receive 27 days, falling short of the statutory minimum.
So how do we find this lost bank holiday, the responsible employers asked? Well here’s the magic, the Employment Elf replied, you can give any affected employees an extra day’s leave before the 31 March 2025 so you won’t be caught out with a risk of a potential claim for unlawful deduction from wages claim.
The responsible employers sighed with relief and all was well again with the workers in the land of the magical (United) Kingdom and everyone lived happily ever after.
If you need to speak with the Employment Elf, drop us a line here and we’ll put you in touch (disclaimer, she’s actually part of Team Tend!).