To think that Good Friday and a few other days in the uk are bank holidays?

[NeedsAsockamnesty]

Just had the weirdest conversation about bank holidays.

The other person insisted that Good Friday Easter Monday and Christmas days are not 'proper official bank holidays' in the uk and these days it's ok to just decide they are not.

So is this correct or am I being reasonable thinking that they are bank holidays?

She definitely needs to get proper advice, sounds very wrong to me

As mentioned above, here in NI Good Friday is not a holiday, we get the Monday and Tuesday. There is a difference between 'Public' and 'Bank holidays', not everyone gets all the bank holidays. For example my husband never gets the 2nd one in May off, but gets May day as it is a public holiday. Here in NI, as a civil servant, I got 12 statutory holidays in addition to 30 days annual leave (why did I leave there???). It was New Years Day, St Patrick's Day, Easter Monday and Tuesday, May Day, Late May bank holiday, 12th and 13th July, August bank holiday and xmas eve, xmas day and boxing day. My husband 'only' gets 10 of those, so misses out on two of the bank holidays. These things are always different in each UK country, so you need to know about England, not the UK. My post was really just to emphasise that!

regardless of where she is in the UK she is still entitled to 5.6 weeks holiday which she is not getting.

www.nidirect.gov.uk/bank-holidays - this says good friday and easter monday are bank holidays in NI

Her annual leave has always been a bit odd tbh she's not allowed to take just a day it has to be a week in one go and a few years back when she was on ML he tried to refuse to allow her to accrue AL and she's only allowed to take each week after 3 months of work and then has to work another 3 months before she can take the next week so she can't even go on a two week break unless she has not had time off for 6 months

It's not too uncommon for annual leave to accrue in odd ways like this, usually when you are a new employee but sometimes for existing employees. But her employer definitely owes her 10 years of Bank Holiday pay and she should be seeing her union/ACAS/an employment lawyer (who might be quite happy for a case on a no-win no-fee basis given how much he's likely to owe her!)

She's in the south west of England.

She appears to be under the impression to do anything at all about it other than politely point it out with a print out of statutory holiday entitlement wold cost her money she cannot afford she's broke. Acas have spoken to her but can't do anything other than tell her he's wrong

IlovePowerHoop - how odd, considering I worked for the civil service and we always worked the friday and got the Monday and Tuesday off. As does everyone else I know. Just goes to show that employers have some say in the matter ;-)

Miss Duke - civil service deparments vary widely according to their responsibilities. My old department could not close on any holidays (bar the 4 at Xmas/New Year) for statutory reasons. Bank holdiays were just another work day to us, although this was added on to our leave allowance to take when we wished.

Can she join a union? Most people have some union representation available to them.