Nanny annual leave & bank holidays

[Hellodaisy29]

Hi!

First post & looking for some advice RE our part time nanny.

Our nanny has been with us for nearly 6 months. She is contracted to work 2 days per week & in her contract has statutory annual leave (11.2 days per year including bank holidays).
She has taken/requested 6 days and we asked her to take 2 days of annual leave when we are on holiday.
She responded by saying she’ll agree to take those 2 days as a favour to us (I was slightly miffed by this, as I have read that many nannies split their leave choices 50:50 with the employer…)
And she was very annoyed and incredulous that bank holidays are included as part of her annual leave allowance. She has basically asked for us to pay her on these days, but she won’t be showing up to work.
She has previously kicked off at us for expecting her to work when she doesn’t think she is “needed” - e.g. if we are available during the day, she presumes that she doesn’t need to come to work, but expects to be paid. On another occasion we asked her to cook for our baby while a family member took him out, and she was outraged that we asked this from her.

She is very good with our son, and he seems happy. This is the most important thing to us, but we are at a bit of a loss over what to do RE the bank holidays, as we really can’t afford to keep paying her for days that she doesn’t work… I should mention we gave her 3 weeks of paid leave over Christmas because we were away on annual leave and she refused to take any of this out of her own annual leave…

What would you do in this situation?

These are pretty standard terms in a nanny job. Unfortunately one of the downsides of being a nanny is that you need to take a proportion of your holiday when it is convenient for the family.

After having had an experience like this, I’d say it doesn’t get better and I’d call it quits. A memorable low point was when she had a go at my husband for daring to get a haircut one day when he was working from home. Apparently if he had time to get his hair cut, he wasn’t that busy and should have let her go home early!

@Mistressiggi

You literally could not give her any less annual leave could you?

Lots of people only get the statutory minimum annual leave. I get a bit more than statutory but often had to use the extra days to cover nanny sick days when we had a full time nanny. If not needed to cover sick days, our nanny might have got a bit of extra holiday towards the end of my holiday year as I’d be able to take the kids for a day out or something, but I wouldn’t want to promise that as it was very rare that I’d end up with extra.

Get a new nanny, I doubt she's that amazing based on her attitude

@Mistressiggi... They gave her three weeks at Christmas!!

She works 2 days a week. She is entitled to 28 days a year pro rata, including bank holidays which amounts to 11.2 days. On top of this, she was given three weeks at Christmas which is the equivalent of 43 days.

Do bh fall on her working days? If she still gets paid for both days that week then no leave is taken.

Nanny here.
You are being very reasonable, she is not.
Bank holidays are part of the 11.2 days annual leave. You can round this up but not down . As there is an extra BH this year maybe make it 12 days.
But … there your generosity should end.
It’s normal for nanny to chose half and the family the other half for annual leave.
You are paying her to work for you. She will have a list of duties in the contract.
What you do when she is working is none of her business. That’s is should you not be working and instead have a leisure day that’s your choice.
If you don’t need her for childcare and there are no nanny duties -eg cleaning playrooms, batch cooking etc then you might let her go early . But you are certainly not obliged to do this. As she has worked for less than two years I would let her go to be honest.