Holiday - Is this legal?

[Iguessyourestuckwithme]

Hello.

I have just received an email from my work HR advising a change in holiday entitlement. I had recently queried it and they are changing holiday entitlement for all.

So basics. I work 40 hours over 4 days- their choice, and they change weekly with 1 day off plus the weekend. I have no control over these 4 days, even to the point that I cant schedule a doctors appointment because I don't know when working from 1 week to the next and can't ask to schedule my day off to be a certain day to book appointments such as my smear.

I recently was made aware that holiday days are 8 hours which means that when there has been a bank holiday I have had to work 32 hours over 3 days instead of 30 to make up that short fall.

So this is the wording of the email I need to sign.

"

As you are contracted to work 40 hours a week, each holiday day would be paid at 10 hours. As you would
not have a set day off each week due to the need of the business changing week to week. If you were to
book a full week off (Monday-Friday), it would be 5 days of holiday being used due to the fact you are
stating you are not available to work on one of those days if the business required you to work some hours.
Therefore, you would be paid 10 hours paid per holiday day booked, which would total to 50 hours paid to
you for the full week booked off.
As you would not have a set day off each week due to the need of the business changing week to week. If
you were to book a full week off (Monday-Friday), it would be 5 days of holiday being used due to the fact
you are stating you are not available to work on one of those days if the business required you to work
some hours. Therefore, based on the above example it could mean 9.5 hours paid per holiday day, which
would total to 47.5 hours paid to you for that week off.
We appreciate that the change in holiday allowance may come across as a loss due to it being 5.5 days less
than the 28 days (based on working 5 days a week), however with only working 4 days a week with a day
off, it means a large number of extra non-working days off across the year. "

Am I right in thinking that if I work 40 hours a week that if I book a week off I shouldn't have to use 50 hours holiday and that me working 40 hours over 4 days compressed does not equate to me having lots of extra days off rather that I have completed my workload.

They have also said I'm entitled to only 22 days but I thought it was 28 days legally?

Any help would be great!

My main point of contention is the using 50 hours holiday to cover 1 40 hour working week.

Suggest get your holiday worked out in hours, rather than days

Does 10 hours include an unpaid break ?

That is because of the bonkers way they are calculating your holiday. It is actually correct. If you want them to take 40 hours for a week, they need to reduce your holiday entitlement to 22.4 days (which is what you are actually entitled to). In terms of how much time you get off, the result would be the same.

There is a simple way for companies to deal with this. Holiday can accrue and be billed in hours, not days. So if you normally work a 40 hour week and you want a week off, you bill 40 hours of your accrued holiday time. If you normally work 30 hours, you bill 30 hours of holiday. You accrue in the same fashion . Whatever the going rate is, you get 1 hour of holiday time for X hours worked. Some people work x hours over a shorter calendar period than others, but that doesn’t matter.

If you are struggling to explain this to HR/ management, do it in reverse I.e. how many hours should you WORK in a year and demonstrate the difference using the old and new methods.
We had to do this when our public holiday rules changed and had effects on part-time staff - the concept felt unfair to some of them but we could demonstrate that they were being treated equally.

As you work compressed days and cannot predict a week ahead to book off AL to give you a whole week without management wanting you to book 5 days to be sure.
I think they should be saying to you to book 4 days paid holiday (to cover your working week) and one day unpaid leave to cover the day you don't work and aren't usually paid for.

Otherwise this gets messy.

The legal minimum entitlement is 20 days plus 8 statutory holidays. Your work can opt for you to work on bank holidays and you use these 8 days on other dates. I used to work sinewgete that says we had 25 days but that was because they gave you Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Years day only off. So, it was actually just the legal minimum.