bank holidays & maternity leave

[Vap0]

Can anyone point me in the right direction over how to approach my employer about thus?

I have spoken to lots of friends who have said they accrued bank holidays during maternity leave, my employer is saying that I won't.

My employer has just informed me that "Unfortunately we have never included bank holidays when calculating maternity annual leave accrual"

I have checked my contract and it says

"Holiday Entitlement

The holiday year runs from 1st January to 31st December. Employees joining the company accrue paid holiday entitlement at the rate of [2.08] days per completed month.

Your annual (full time) holiday entitlement is 25 days plus public holidays. Unused holiday cannot be carried over from one year to the next."

It sounds to me like they are wrong. I work for a large American company with a relatively small uk office (150 employees in uk). There is no Union and just 1 person in HR.

Any advice greatly received

I will be on maternity leave while 3 bank holidays fall, my employer has confirmed I can take these as holiday before I go on maternity leave, I thought I read somewhere when I was looking into this myself that it's an employers decision as to whether bank holidays can be accrued.. I may be wrong though!