New employer making me take bank holidays out of my holiday

[Bunnyflop7]

As a result I only have 14 days to take for the entire year. I have kids and it’s going to be ridiculously hard to cover holidays. Never ever had this at another employer.

is this commonplace?

Hi, the legal minimum holidays - if working full time- is 28 days a year. If part-time, it's pro rata. Bank holidays can be included in the 28 days, so if included, you would be entitled to 20 days + 8 days bank holiday paid.
I hope this helps.

You were “welling up”?

why didn’t you “well up” when you read the job spec before applying? And then not apply?

You say “new employer”

but you seem to be working there already, so you presumably read the bit about holidays in your contract before joining?

Yes I had this. Part time job. Really annoying. One of reasons I left quickly!!!

What does your contract say about this? In the UK I believe an employer can count BH as part of your leave (but not 100% sure on that). I have to say if they do that it sucks and I'd be looking elsewhere for work.

Tbis does not sound right. I work part time for the NHS. My leave is calculated in hours and I have to book my bank holidays from my allowance but they are added on to my allowance at the start. Usually with part time they do a positive and negative calculation to work out if you gain or lose out from part time working (I.e. if you work Tues Wed and Thurs you usually lose out as not many bank holidays fall on those days where as someone whose working days are Monday and Friday would gain as this is when all BH fall.). They then add a bit of leave to the first scenario and take off from the second to even it out.

I still don't understand the problem.
Full time people in your job also have to use 8/28 days on random bank holidays which is just a bit less than the third of your leave you're so upset about.
If you work part time then obviously you get less leave than full time people because you also work less. That's not shocking.

I work part time and work Mondays. The pro rata thing means I proportionally have to "spend" about 1 day more leave on Bank Holidays than full time people do. That 1 day makes little difference when the summer holidays are 6 weeks long, childcare is still a big problem! And working part time is better overall for that and outweighs the negligible difference in bank holiday vs annual leave proportion.

Everyone has bank holidays taken out of overall leave allowance. It’s just you will feel it more because you have fewer overall hours as leave, which is entirely normal because it’s pro-rata for part time workers, which will be the same everywhere.

I think the suggestion to switch your working day on BH weeks is the best one, but as others say bank holidays are usually within school holidays anyway. Those weeks you’d then only need to take three days leave of your 14 to get the whole week.

Sorry having read more it does sound right, you work mainly Mondays so you will lose leave to BH days. But that means you're allowance is there to take from the other days you work so should work out even

But it's applicable to all part time jobs. Only way to avoid it is to work full time!
Or just switch days in affected weeks if possible.

You have it the wrong way round. It is better to not have a Monday as a working day as you need to take the day out of your annual leave to be off. If you don't work on the Monday usually then you have more choice about when to take your leave.

OP has the bank holiday allowance added pro rata to her annual leave entitlement so when there is a bank holiday Monday she needs to deduct the hours from her entitlement.

As above, 28 days inc BH is legal requirement for full time. Do you work a half week (or equivalent hours)?

OP is getting the correct number of hours for working 25 hours per week. 25 x 5.6 = 140 hours which is what the OP is getting

5.6weeks = the statutory minimum holidays
For a person working 5 days this gives 28 days

Would it be possible to work another day instead of taking the bank holiday on those weeks? I officially work Tuesdays to Thursdays but can swap a day on an ad hoc basis by mutual agreement.

You should get the 20 days (pro rata) leave. Then also get the 8 bank holiday (pro rata) on top. But then you need to book a whole day off for each bank holiday so you end up using some of the normal leave for Bank Holidays and its crap if you work Mondays as I do.

As someone who works in HR and is part time and done various part time arrangements over my life it will be correct. If you get 25 days holiday and 8 days for bank hols for full time employees then both are prorated and then added together. Then if a working day falls on a bank holiday you need to take it from your total leave. If you work Monday’s you are generally worse off and I tell people doing 4 days if they can do tues-fri they will be better off. I take a Wednesday and so I lose out but that day off suits me. However when it is a bank holiday week I generally swapped the days, worked the Wednesday and kept the holiday so that I could have more holiday. Luckily it worked for my Monday childminder as she got paid too!

this way of working it out is the fairest way and recommended by ACAS.

please also, don’t forget that if you use your holiday for that bank holiday you are getting paid for that day, whereas if you worked tues-fri you wouldn’t get paid for it. Maybe ask if you can swap or just take unpaid leave for a couple of days which would be in effect the same.

happy to help further if required

It's not that Monday workers are "worse off"

But they have less flexibility on using their holidays than if they chose another day.

You still get the same number of days off as every other part timer doing your number of days.

I think this is fairly standard. When I worked part time, we calculated leave days in hours - I had a pro rata number of hours for leave and a pro rata number of hours for bank holidays and they were all added together. I had to take bank holidays as leave (i.e. deduct them from my total number of hours).

This has been standard where ever I work.

It's probably better not to include Mondays as one of your working days.

Yes I work on a Monday so have to take a lot of leave off my allowance before I even start booking anything else. Luckily get a good annual leave allowance.

@Ermintrude2222 no the legal entitlement is 5.6 weeks which for those who work full time over 5 days a week = 28 days. If you work full time over 6 days a week it’s 33.6 days.

And that flexibility probably wouldn't even make much difference to the OP since her concern is school holidays. Almost all Monday Bank holidays are in the school holidays. So if she didn't work Mondays, she'd just end up having to use her leave to take every Tuesday after a bank holiday off instead. It makes no difference.

This isn't strictly true

Limits on statutory leave
Statutory paid holiday entitlement is limited to 28 days. For example, staff working 6 days a week are only entitled to 28 days’ paid holiday.

You know by now they can do that but also they can determine exactly when you take your remaining 14 days.

Sorry I mean if the positive and negatives were not taken in to account and you were just given pro rata leave based on how many hours you work then you would benefit from working a Monday and Friday over those who work mid week. So where I used to work (not sure how other places do it) positives and negatives were calculated and added or deducted from leave to level it out. I haven't explained myself very well!

That’s so stingy ! I know it’s allowed but I never worked anywhere that was that mean.

id be looking for a new job asap