notice & holiday entitlement for nanny who i am making redundant..

[charliebrownsmum]

Hope someone can help.
Our nanny has worked for us since March 2010 and due to a change in our circumstances we can no longer afford to keep her. we have 3dc's. the eldest is at primary school and the middle one starts in August. We are going to put dc3 into a nursery and my dp will collect the other 2 from school each day so we won't need after school care for them.

As she has only been with us for just over a year i thought i only had to give her 1 weeks notice for redundancy plus outstanding holiday pay but i just checked her contract and is says 4 weeks notice on it. So i'm guessing i need to give 4 weeks.
Can i ask that she take her outstanding holiday during these 4 week? I really can't afford to pay her for another 4 weeks plus a weeks holiday pay.

any advice you can offer would be greatly appreciated.

I was planning on giving her a week plus her holiday and an extra weeks cash in hand as an extra as i feel so guilty about letting her go but just can't afford 5 weeks as we're hemmorhaging money right now.
I'm hoping she will agree to it as we have always been very generous with time off and she gets lots of days off where dp has no work or if grandparents are visiting we tell her not to worry about coming in as they are happy to have the dc's (she had 2 days last week) but i'm sure she will forget all of that once the reality kicks in and tbh i wouldn't blame her.

I think it would be reasonable to ask her to take the holiday in the notice period- and in fact when I was made redundant we were told we had to take it in our notice period - it was 2 months notice though - and also in the notice period you could tell her she can have time off to apply for jobs and go to interviews

BusinessLink:"You can also insist that a worker takes any holiday owed to them as part of their notice period - as long as you give them their correct period of notice."

Your contract says that you will give 4 weeks notice of terminating the job, so you do need to give that. It can include time when the nanny works, can include holiday not yet taken. So I would suggest you formally give notice as soon as possible - write them a letter stating that the job no longer exists due to the circumstances involved and thus that they are being made redundant. Work out what days you still need them to work, how much holiday is outstanding and thus their last working day (probably around 24th June).

I don't think that Redundancy Pay is due, as March 2010 - June 2011 is not 2 years of continuous service. BusinessLink: Redundancy

Days off you have given her in the past were your choice to give. I do not feel that can be taken into account for the purposes of calculating her pay on termination.

hi thanks for all of you advice.
Nannynick I agree I chose to give her those days off so I wouldn't bring that up. I will ask her if she can take her holiday and I will give her as much time off as she needs to look for another job. To be honest we can manage without her as my dp is a freelancer with virtually no work and has been that way for months so not much chance of things changing, but i think for her it might be good to work some of her notice as she has quite a good childminder network where we live and she may find someone who needs a nanny through them.