Bank Holiday Entitlement For Full-Time And Part-Time Employees & Paid Bank Holidays

Working on bank holidays has become increasingly more common in the UK over the years in many sectors. Employers should make themselves fully aware of legal bank holiday pay rules surrounding holiday entitlement for employees and their responsibilities. The UK has eight permanent bank holidays per year, including New Year’s Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, May Day, Spring Bank Holiday, Late Summer, Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Employers must have sufficient knowledge about bank holiday employment law. Almost, but not all workers, are entitled to 5.6 weeks of paid holiday every year. It also gets referred to as statutory annual leave entitlement.

The allowance for part-time workers and bank holidays is the same as for those contracted to work full-time. Full-time employees are legally entitled to 28 days of statutory leave per year. Part-time employees who are working fewer hours are still entitled to the 5.6 weeks of paid leave, but it is worked out on a pro-rata basis and needs to be calculated differently due to them working fewer hours.

Below is an example of how to calculate bank holiday entitlement for part-time workers:

Full-time holiday entitlement for employees bank holiday days per year x 8 hours per day = 64 working hours

If you have a member of your staff who works part-time and works 20 hours per week, calculating their leave would be as follows:

20 ( contracted hours per week) ÷ 40 (equivalent full-time hours) x 64 (equivalent full-time bank holiday entitlement) = 32 hours of leave and bank holiday pay entitlement per year.

With bank holidays for part-time workers, imagine, having two employees working 20 per week. Employee No1 works Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; Employee No2 works Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Employee No. 1 would always benefit from having a bank holiday on Monday, and Employee No. 2 would not. Part-time bank holiday entitlement is the same for all employees, whether they work on public holidays or not.

As the employer, you can have bank holidays included in annual leave as there is no statutory requirement for being paid for bank holidays at the time of writing.

Bank holiday employment rules currently state that employees have no statutory right not to work on bank holidays. An employee can’t refuse to work on a bank holiday if it gets written into their contract, not even on religious grounds. Employers should also be aware that not allowing some flexibility with paid bank holidays for a religious-orientated staff member during periods, such as bank holidays with religious significance, could be viewed as discriminatory if non-religious employees are given time off.

The bank holiday payment rules that companies offer may vary according to size and available resources. Some employers give holiday pay and bank holidays, others may provide 28 days of annual leave, plus 8 public holidays as extra days. There is no statutory right to any extra bank holiday entitlement pay either. Again, some companies pay time and a half, or double time, but there is nothing in bank holiday pay law that states you have to do this. As the employer, if you wish to pay your staff members more for working on public holidays, you can set this out in their employment contract.

With over 5 million casual workers in the United Kingdom, employers and HR support services must understand the differences between part-time and casual staff holiday entitlement.

Casual workers are on what has been commonly known as a ‘zero-hour contract’, meaning they could work ten hours one week, none the following week, and then forty the week after that. However, their working hours can be highly flexible. With the employer not having to offer any work if none is available and the employee not having to accept any work when offered, casual workers still have employment rights. Legal pay for bank holidays would be the same as their regular pay rate unless the employee and employer had a different arrangement. Bank holiday pay law regarding holidays for casual workers is calculated differently from part-time workers. However, they are entitled to 5.6 weeks of paid annual leave (calculated differently due to the hours worked), legal minimum wage, and protection from whistleblowing.