Can my employer get away with this?

[365isalot]

I seem to have very little annual leave and I wonder if it's less than legal entitlement . I work 4 days a week - 3 full days plus 2 half days, (spread over 5 days Mon - Friday). Our business is open 7 days a week, & closes 2 wks over Christmas so i have to take 8 days leave then. Ive got 20 days leave, but taking Christmas closure into account , that leaves 12 days to take when I want. To get 2 weeks off for a family holidays I need to use up 8 days. That leaves only 4 days over the rest of the whole year, which seems really tight. Bank Holidays have to come out of my leave entitlement too. Today was the fourth Bank Holiday this year when my family and friends were all off work while I was in the office all day Am I being unreasonable?

Your statutory minimum is 5.6 weeks which can include requiring to take holiday during closure periods like Christmas and only getting bank holiday off if it comes out of your leave. So working 4 days a week your minimum statutory entitlement is 22.4 days of leave per year. You would not be unreasonable to ask for your leave entitlement to be revisited - there are government info pages which you can find by googling which you can show them.

Thanks cex

www.gov.uk/holiday-entitlement-rights/entitlement Here is the link to your legal entitlement.

You are entitled to 5.6 weeks holiday.
4 × 5.6 = 22.4 days. It's normal better to calculate in terms of hours, but as you've stated days we'll use those.

Your employer has the legal right to specify when you take your leave. That is, each and every day. It isn't commonly known because most employers allow some choice about leave from their employees, which leads to people thinking that they have the right to choose. Indeed, many employment contacts will confer that right (which is fine because a contract can give more rights than the law but it can't take away legal rights). However, the fact remains that in the UK, there is no legal right for the employee to choose holidays.

So, sadly, your employer is in the right here. You have no right to paid time off on Bank Holidays, so if you want to take them off you will need to use your holiday leave.

When I went from full to part time in the NHS I was forced to use my annual leave for all bank holidays though they were excluded if full time. It was looked into but I was told it was considered only appropriate for those who were full time to get those days. That my department was closed on those days was considered irrelevant

Another employer would closed from mid day Christmas Eve until after new year - that was forced annual leave, every day including bank holiday/weekend for everyone.

X-post with lougle who actually answers why!

Becca that doesn't sound correct. You can't be treated less favourably as a part-time employee. If your full time colleagues got 22 days holiday plus any bank holidays, and you got 22 days holidays pro-rata including any bank holidays that fell on your normal working days, then you were treated less favourably because your colleagues had 22 days that they could take at any time plus bank holidays off, while you only had 22 days - no. Bank holidays that fall on your working days that you could take at any time.

What your employer should have done is calculate the number of bank holidays in the year, add that to your leave total (if indeed they choose to pay for bank holidays - they don't have to), then pro-rata it.

E.g. 22 days annual leave + 8 days bank holidays = 30 days AL. 3 days per week= 3/5 or 0.6.

30 × 0.6 = 18 days annual leave.

That means that it doesn't matter whether the bank holiday falls on your day of work or not, you've been dealt with fairly.

Well that's what they did, my contract clearly said that. I did argue the point with my, obviously crap, Union but got nowhere. They said I couldn't have the bank holidays. They were funny buggers - all kinds of mad polices that made no sense at all, but that's the NHS for you, and I'm not suprised at all to learn they couldn't actually do it (over ten years later I find I was right, thankyou!!)

To be fair my line manager got me a large payout months after I had left because they argued I'd been treated unfairly over sick leave (long story).

At least I know now!

Sounds about right to me, I also work 4 days
Xmas -2weeks
Holiday -2 weeks
And 4 days left over which is another week, so you are getting 5 weeks paid holiday