HELP PLEASE:TERM TIME PAY & HOLIDAY CONFUSION!

[Shoppaholic]

I am really confused. I work 28 hours per week, term time. My pay is £12,000 per annum and firstly I need to work out how to pro rata this over 40 weeks. Also, can anyone tell me exactly how I should calculate my holiday entitlement? We are a small agency and everyone else gets 30 days (22 plus 8 bank holidays)? I'm unclear as to what happens when the offices are closed on the whim of our 2 bosses as other staff will get this as paid time off but it will fall at Christmas (during the school holidays) when I am off anyway. I've been told last Christmas other staff got 7 extra days off (on top of their normal annual leave allowance). Can I ask for this to be taken into account when they calculate my wages or am I within my rights to request this as an extra couple of floating holidays? Not sure if this is unreasonable. Any help and breakdowns of how pay and holiday is calculated is appreciated. Hope someone out there can help clear this confusion. There's conflicting advice on the internet and HR haven't come back to me yet. Thanks :(

22 + 8 = 30 Days / 52 and * 40 = 23 Days seems fair. They might make it 21 days if your christmas BH are not counted.

As for Salary that is £12k / 52 * 40 = £9230

As for asking for extra time off I would say not. If they close the office at Christmas and you're not there its just the luck of the draw. Its like sending the people who work Saturday home early doesn't give someone on Monday - Friday any extra rights.

Your pay hours would be calculated as follows:
Weeks to be paid: 40 plus 6 plus 1.6 (for bank hols) = 47.6
12,000/52.14*47.6 = 10,955.12 per annum (£912.93 per month gross)

Grevling hasn't taken into account that you should get paid for your annual leave and bank hols.
And, as for the extra time off - I would say there is no harm in asking, for example, you want to take a day off for sports day? It's not contractual although if you really wanted to, there is a case that you are being discriminated for being part time.

Thanks so much AngelEyes46 and Grevling for your posts. Firstly I made an error typing in gross salary before it's pro rata'd. Should be £22000. Really sorry. But both figures you have given are still different and the internet gives so many different ways to calculate pro rata'd salaries and holiday entitlement it's driving me bonkers! HR called today to say they are working it out but reckon it will be around £14800 - seems they're just as confused too and they need time to work out the hol entitlement! Does this look right? I can't work out why the salary is divided by 52 when everyone else works 46 weeks of the year if you take off their annual leave entitlement should it not be divided by 46 i.e. 22000/46*40? AngelEyes46,can you confirm how you get 1.6 for Bank Hols in your equation & based on my proper salary, what I should be looking to get? You guys obviously have a much more logical mind than me.....!! Maybe it's just way past my bedtime! Really grateful for your expertise. X

Oops. I sort of assumed the holiday was taken during term time :)

Just a note about the extra holiday given to staff. If full time employees are getting extra days part-timers must get it too under the Part-time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2000. This could be added onto your holiday entitlement or paid if you agreed. Either way, there should be no difference because you are part time.

The thing to do would be to work out what your FTE is (eg 0.45) and then calculate what that is from the extra days and give you that. If, for example, full timers were getting an extra 10 days you should get 4.5 days either added onto your holiday entitlement or paid.

This is why it's important that employers don't just give ad hoc days off over Christmas without thinking about the impact on part time workers and especially term time only workers who will always lose out.

Assuming your holiday is for you to take when you choose during term time, then your salary will be:
£22,000 / 52 x 40 (based on 40 working weeks/year) = gross pro-rated salary £16,923.08.

Holidays: 30 / 52 x 40 = 23 days/year

Thanks Grevling. I should have been more clear. I don't get any annual leave as I don't work school holidays but they give me X number of weeks leave which is supposed to be included in my salary (so I get paid for 40 weeks that I work plus X weeks for leave - it's also the X which I'm trying to calculate) Hope this clarifies.

Cheers KatieMiddleton for your post. Good to know there's legislation I can refer to but I reckon they'll use point 3 and say it's inappropriate. As AngelEyes46 says, I can only ask.....

I've got some calcs which seem to work now (DH had a stab at it, love that guy!) do these look right to anyone or have "we" (ha ha) missed something crucial:

To calculate HOLIDAY entitlement:

• 28 (hours per week worked)*40(weeks worked annually)=1120 hours
• All staff get 30 days holiday = weeks, therefore 6/46(weeks worked plus 6 weeks leave)=13.04%.
• 13.04% of 1120 hours=146 hours. Therefore holiday accrued = 146/28=5.214 weeks. So ANNUAL LEAVE DUE = 5.214 weeks.

To calculate PRO RATA TERM TIME SALARY:
£22000/5245.12(40 weeks worked plus 5.214 weeks annual leave)=£19089.23. Then £19089.23/35 (number of hours full time staff work)28 hours (number of hours I work)=£15271.38.

This looks right as the hourly rate for £22000(22000/52/35)=£12.09 per hour and the hourly rate for £15271.38(15271.38/45.12/28)=£12.09 per hour. So the hourly rate is the same for the annual salary and for the pro rata'd salary which is right, it should remain as the constant I think. Can anyone concur with this or am I just delirious and want it to work too badly that it's beginning to mak sense? Would appreciate ny thoughts.

Thanks x

Thanks EllyPoo for your message too. I get different figures to you but hope mine now make sense - maybe just wishful thinking! x

Ooooooops, my message should read "I don't get any annual leave as I get the school holidays off".

Everyone is legally entitled to holiday pay, and you are not entittled to be paid in lieu. What will be happening is that you are getting paid when you are already off due to school holidays.

Legally you are entitled to 28 days if you work a five day week 52 weeks a year.

The fact that you don't work all the year means that this entitlement should be pro rata'd

Kate is correct in that you should not be disadvantaged as you only work part time.

How many hours is the full time contract? I hate sloppiness in HR, it gives us a bad name!!

They cannot legally argue it's inappropriate in this instance. Giving a benefit (extra holiday) to full timers and not pro-rata or compensating part timers is unlawful.

It may that a benefit cannot be split (eg an annual gym membership). So part timers are paid a cash equivilent that's pro-rata'd. As long as it's equitable and fair that's fine. Giving one lot something just for being full time is not.

Hey watfordmummy! Thanks this is helpful. You are right, they are calculating a couple of weeks pro rata'd hols into my salary payment. I make the holiday entitlement they owe me to be 5.21 weeks as per calcs above. Full time hours are 35 hours per week. I'm not slagging off HR - they've got a job to do and it's mind boggling how much maths is involved if you're not into figures! Do DH's calcs look right to you? THanks :)

Hey Katie, thanks for your guidance, this is v helpful and a good example to use. What d'you make of DH's calcs?

Erm, I haven't looked at the calculations because there were too many unknown variables before. Although I see you've just posted the full time hours are 35 per week so that helps.

Not very helpfully the government is currently reviewing guidance for calculating term time only workers holiday

To give a reasonable estimate I would need to know how many weeks you employed for per year and how many of those are work (the balance being annual leave). At the moment I just know you work for 40 weeks per year. Are the 30 days full time staff get inclusive of bank holidays?

If I assume full time staff get 30 days in total I calculate it like this (although it is very late so I'll need to check this with fresh eyes and brain tomorrow):

FTE get 6 weeks holiday per year. So I calculated the percentage of time off on annual leave as 13.04%. The 13.04 per cent figure is 6 weeks' holiday, divided by 46 weeks (being 52 weeks - 6 weeks). The 6 weeks are excluded from the calculation as the worker is not at work during those 6 weeks.

Then I calculated 113.04% of 40 weeks which is 45.216 weeks. I would expect this to be your actual contracted annual weeks.

Then because you only work 28 hours and FTE is 35 I worked out how much you would get if you worked a full year ie 52 weeks (22,000/35) x 28 = £17,600.

Then to work out the actual annual salary I take £17,600, find the weekly rate and multiply it by the number of contracted weeks (17600/52) x 45.216 = £15,303.88 (rounded up to whole pence).

So I get £15,303.88 which would presumably be paid in 12 equal instalments which is £1275.32 gross per month.

So very similar to your dh! I used the holiday calculation for casual workers from Business Link and gave you my workings out so you can compare.

Thanks for this. You are right, all staff get 6 weeks which is inclusive of their bank holidays. Your figures are great and give me something to run by the bosses. Bit apprehensive about asking for pro rata days off for the extra hols over Xmas as I reckon this might be the straw that breaks the camel's back but nothing ventured nothing gained. Thanks for your efforts, I'll try and digest these figures again before I make the approach to HR. Glad our numbers are long the same lines and really appreciate yours/everyone's efforts. Thanks so much.

Sorry to answer your other question, I work 40 weeks in the year and HR calculated the pro rata holiday they give me to be 4 weeks, which me and the DH reckon is wrong. That's why I've been trying to work out the holiday entitlement pro rata based on the 6 weeks other staff get and both yours and my percentage figures seem to tally. Hope this makes sense.

Hmm. 4 weeks? That sounds like they haven't included any allowance for bank holidays. Not that they have to give you "bank holidays" per se but they do have to comply with your contract (what does that say about hours of work and annual leave? You should have a written statement of employee particulars at the very least which contains those details amongst others) and with Working Time Regulations and the Part Time Worker regs linked above.

What happens if a bank holiday occurs during term time? Do you take it off as holiday? If so that needs to be deducted from your 5.216 weeks holiday otherwise you'd get it twice which would be unfair on other workers.

Apologies that's not terribly clear - I'm still asleep (child unsettled in night ) and I'm on my phone.

Sorry to hear you had a bad night with your little one :( - It'll get better (promise!). Thanks for your response. HR reckon I have got it wrong. Their take on this is they give me 4 weeks holiday which is worked out as follows:
40/52x22 (22 being the FTE holidays) = 17 days so they think I should be happy they are overpaying me (they are giving me 4 weeks paid holiday on top of the 40 weeks I work). This does not look right to me as their calcs don't add up.

Also, I think the hourly rate no matter whether I am working f/t 52 weeks, p/t 52 week or p/t term time should remain at 22000/52/35 = £12.09 per hour which is the same as the hourly rate DH calculated and around 2p off what you'd calculated. This should be a constant, surely, regardless of the working pattern. Do you agree?

I'm dreading meeting HR. And bringing up the issue of the discretionary holidays. Oh and been here 5 years (yes seriously taken me that long to work out something's wrong as I'd TRUSTED their calcs!) so will get extra 3 days - 25 before pro rata'ing. They reckon I'm getting near enough that figure now - as in I should count myself lucky they've been overpaying on the holidays upto now (but they've not accounted for the Bank Hols everyone gets) so if they're funny with me now, how they gonna react when they get the whole picture?

The only Bank Hol not in the school holidays is the early May Bank Hol.

22 days is not even correct for full time holidays. The legal minimum is 28 days.

When does your holiday year run to and from? And what do you do in term times when there is a bank holiday like May day? Do you work it? And is that the only one? There's usually 2 in May although this year one has moved to June for the jubilee.

Give me a few more details and I'll draft you something you can take to them and let them chew over and respond to.

What sort of organisation is this? ie how big? Public/private sector?

The 22 days plus 8 Bank Holidays totals 30 days in total so apparently (according to ACAS) that falls within legal requirements as the statutory 5.6 weeks (28 days) may or may not include Bank Holidays - it's up to the employer. In essence, all employees get 30 days leave.

The academic year is what we follow for holidays (only changed recently - previously Jan to Jan) and runs from Sept to Sept but this has never affected me as I did not get any holidays. Small organisation, private sector, less than 10 employees (both full and p/t but I'm the only tt employee). My contract says my entitlement to annual leave is included in the salary paid and I am therefore not entitled to further paid leave during term-time other than public holidays.

So the only Bank Holiday that falls when I am "working" is the early May one, yes that's May Day, you're quite right. The firm is closed on this day. All other BH's are when I am off. ACAS said this should not change things and I would still be entitled to them, but I am not sure.

Yes but they can't divide by a whole year (52 weeks) and then give you a partial holiday allowance of 22 days. They're trimming too much.

Your 28 hours are they worked across 5 days?

Bank holidays are just annual leave that has to be taken on specified days. If you're already off and unpaid you're not getting these.

I'll have a look later. Currently trying to do bedtime and dh away.

Ok thanks, hope it's a better night! Yes it's 28 hours worked over 5 days. Do you agree with my logic on the hourly rate being the same regardless of p/t, t/t ot f/t?

You've been a big help, really grateful. Thank you. (thanks)

Forget the hourly rate logic actually. The crux of the dilemma seems to be how the annual leave has been calculated. This is what HR don't agree with and are adamant they are right. I need to be able to disprove them and without paying mega bucks for an emplyment lawyer I can't afford, can I present the ACAS argument? It seems they're not having it and are banking on me backing down. :(

The argument HR are presenting is all employees get 22 days but they don't. They get 30 days - 22 days plus 8 bank holidays. Surely even term times employees are entitled to bank holidays? HR don't seem to thin I should be getting these.

I'll draft you something - I've just been mad busy this weekend... my own family think I come with laptop permanently attached as I've barely been away from it.

I have to go to bed now - I've been burning the candle at both ends so I'm too shattered to write anything that would make proper sense.