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Holidays
14 Sep 2007
The information contained within this briefing is accurate at the time of writing.
Holiday entitlements: how much do you get?
The minimum holiday entitlement is increasing.
If yhe holiday year (sometimes called a leave year) starts on or after 1 October 2007 the legal minimum is 4.8 weeks a year (24 days if for employees who work a five day week); there is no statutory right to get bank holidays on top of this. If the holiday year does not start in October your employees will be entitled to a proportion of the additional days.
You as an employer may give more than the minimum 4.8 weeks leave as part of your terms of employment. You can check how much leave your employees are allowed by following this link.
The employee has no right to additional holiday, even if it's unpaid, unless thier contract provides for it. As the employer you can set your own rules on any holidays you give over and above the legal minimum. The employer is not allowed to give less than the legal minimum.
If the employee wants to take holiday
The employee must give the employer advance notice that they want to take holiday. This notice should be at least twice as long as the amount of holiday they want to take (for example, they should give two week's notice for one week's holiday).
You the employer can refuse permission for employees holiday as long as you give notice which is at least as long as the holiday requested (so to refuse a request for a week's leave, you would have to inform the employee a week in advance).
The employees contract may set out other rules about when they can take thier holiday. This is allowed so long as the rules don't effectively prevent them from taking holiday at all.
If you want the employee to take holiday
You can decide when some or all of your employees holidays must be taken. For instance, you may require them to take some of thier holiday to cover the bank holidays, or may require the whole company to take holiday during a Christmas shutdown.
This may be in thier contract of employment, or it may be normal practice built up over time. You as the employer have to give the same amount of notice as stated above for the employee.
How holiday pay is calculated
If the employees pay varies from week to week, thier holiday pay should be the average weekly wage over the previous 12 weeks. Otherwise, they should be paid thier normal weekly wage (excluding non-guaranteed overtime).
Rolled-up holiday pay
Holiday pay should be paid for the time when the employee actually take thier holiday. The Employer cannot just include an amount for holiday pay in an employees hourly rate (called 'rolled-up holiday pay'). If the employees current contract includes rolled-up pay you, the employer should renegotiate so that holiday pay is made at the time when the employee takes thier holiday.
14 Sep 2007
The information contained within this briefing is accurate at the time of writing.
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