Working P/T and Bank Holidays

[AlmondFrangipani]

I'm going back to work in August after maternity leave. My employer has agreed that I can work 3 days a week which will be Monday - Wednesday. Please can someone clarify how that would work with bank holidays? In particular Christmas this year is a Thursday and Friday. Do I get any sort of allowance for the fact these are bank hols but I'm not at work anyway? Thanks.

Bank holidays should be given pro-rata - ie in your situation you get 3/5 of the bank holidays of a full timer. You should get the time added to your annual leave which you then need to take to cover the bank holidays that fall on your working days.

I work the same days as you and it varies from year to year how it works in practice, depending on what days bank holidays fall.

Some years when a lot of BH's fall Mon-Wed I'll have to use some of my holiday allowance to cover them all (ie I've had more BH days off than my 3/5 allowance).

Some years when most of the BHs fall on a Thurs-Fri I have a little extra annual leave as I only need to use part of my BH extra annual leave hours on Bank Holidays and can choose to use the rest at another time.

It's swings and roundabouts, but evens out in the end.

I work 3 days per week. I get 5 weeks holiday per year. On top of that I get paid bank holidays but only if they fall on my scheduled days, if they are on days I don't work I have that time off.

This year I will work on 23 and have 25 and 26 as paid bank holiday. Last year gone I had 26 as paid bank holiday and had to go back in on 27 as that was a Friday and a scheduled day to work.

Usually, this is done by working out your AL in total days - so a FT person might get 22 days plus 8 bank holidays - 30 days in total. You work 3/5 of FT, which comes out as 18 days total.
Then if a bank holiday is one of your working days, you use a days leave, if not, you don't.

I've just read that back and it doesn't seem very clear - sorry!

Basically, I get an annual leave allowance made up of hours of holiday + my share of the bank holiday hours.

The first thing I do in a new holiday year is look for all the bank holidays that fall on my working days and subtract those hours from my annual leave card. I can then use the remaining hours to book annual leave as normal.

Working out your leave in hours rather than days is pretty good if you are part time.

Agree that you need to find out how your company do it.

The companies that I have worked for usually work out your TOTAL holiday entitlement pro rata.

So, a full timer would get 25 days plus 8 bank holidays every year (last year everyone got an extra day for the Royal Wedding but there are 8 bank holidays as standard).

So, a full timer would get 33 days. If you do a 3 day week, you get three fifths of that so 19.8 days which would be rounded up as 20 days.

Then, if a bank holiday falls on one of your normal work days (i.e. a MOnday, TUesday or a Wednesday) you have to take it as annual leave. At my firm, this is done automatically for part timers so they know where they are upto.

As a complete aside, do you have to work MOndays? I have worked 3 days for 8 years, and obviously I get the same amount of leave (20 days) whichever 3 days I work. However, I have never worked Mondays - even ignoring Christmas and New Year, there are ALWAYS 4 bank holidays on a Monday, so by working Mondays, you've used up 4 days of your leave straight away. If Christmas Day is a MOnday, Boxing Day would be a Tuesday, and New Years Day would also be a MOnday, that means that you'd have to use 7 days just to cover the bank holidays (the only bank holiday you wouldn't need to take annual leave for would be Good Friday). If you think you only get 3/5 of the 8 days added into your leave, so 4.8 days (probably round up to 5) you'll spend more of your own holiday leave covering Bank Hols (if that makes sense) by working MOndays.