Fair Holiday Allowance?

[MyOtherCarIsAPorsche]

My daughter has worked for the same company for 4 years.

She works part time - which works out as 5 days out of 10 or 2.5 days a week.

Her holiday allowance is 28 days minus 8 days for bank holidays (ft). So since she started she has always had 10 days leave. However, her work have taken away three days holiday entitlement because they have said that the bank holidays this year have fallen mainly on her shift. So she has only got 7 days leave to take.

This doesn't sound fair/correct as the bank holidays have already been taken from her holiday allowance.

Can she ask for her three days back?

This will mean that she is paying for an extra three days childcare/holiday club for her children or she will have no holidays to take over the Christmas break.

Does she actually work full time hours for 5 days out if 10?

It sounds like they are taking the bank holidays off twice.

Yes - so out of a two week period, Mon-Fri, she works a split week. Thursday, Friday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, - 8.15am-5.15pm.

When I asked her to question this decision, work gave her lots of flannel that she didn't understand and none of us can get our head around the fact that it appears that 11 bank holidays have been taken from her when there are 8 in a year.

@Mayflyoff

Statutory minimum holiday is 5.6 weeks per year, so for 5 days a week that’s 28 days. Employers are allowed to include public holidays in this, but they’re also able to choose to add public holidays on top. Part time statutory minimum is pro rata. So if she works 2.5 days a week, her holiday entitlement is 14 days. It sounds like her employer takes public holidays as part of the statutory minimum, so when a public holiday falls on one of her working days she’d have to use one of her 14 days. That would apply whether it was 1 of the public holidays in the year or 8 of the public holidays in the year.

It sounds like they’ve messed up their calculations and have been giving your daughter below statutory minimum paid holiday.

Surely she should get 14 days per year, then the bank holidays come out of that allowance. So if 7 of the 8 bank holidays fall on her days then 7 would be correct? I'm not HR though so someone may come along to correct me

Look it up on gov.uk and get her to write out the calculations and show the employer.

Yes that’s right.

actually looking at the OP I misread as 3 of the public holidays fall on her working days.

We haven’t been told how many it is, and that’s the crucial information.

They haven’t taken 11 bank holidays from her though, they’ve taken 7. Is that how many fall on her shift this year?

Statutory minimum holiday for people
who work 5 days a week is 28 days.

For companies that provide the minimum and are based in England, Thats often done as 20 days holiday plus 8 fixed bank holidays on the standard days for England.

If she works half time, then she gets half the statutory minimum entitlement. So thats 14 days. However, that needs to cover any holiday days she chooses to take, and any days off she gets as a result of not working on bank holidays that fall on her normal working days. So one way or another, she gets 14 of her normal
working days off over the year.

If she gets really unfortunate with how they fall then it could be that all 8 of the bank holiday days fall on days she would usually work, in which case she’d only get 6 to take on days of her choice. Best starting point to clarify whether it’s correct is to look at her work pattern and the bank holidays that fall on her working days and add them up. Then deduct that from 14 and that’s how many holiday days she should have to put on days she wants them.

I think the way they are working it they’ve calculated she should get 4 paid bank holidays off but because of way it’s landed she’s had/ will of had 7 over the year and those additional bank holidays reduce her holiday allowance by three days.

If that’s the case I think they are right.

So does this mean that the bank holidays dictate which days she has to have off? So most of her holiday entitlement is taken as single Mondays?

She needs the bulk of her entitlement during the six week holiday so that she can keep her holiday club costs down. If she uses the same amount as last year she will have no holidays left for the rest of the year/Christmas.

I’ve done a bit of counting on the calendar.

If she works a regular two week pattern, and her rotation falls so that she would have been working Good Friday and Easter Monday, then she’s got really unlucky on how the bank holidays fall this year vs her work
pattern.

She’d have been due to work:
Good Friday
Easter Monday
May Day
August Bank holiday
Christmas Day
Boxing Day

So total of 6 of the 8 bank holidays fall on her working days. So of the 14 statutory days she’s entitled to, this year bank holidays are taking up 6 of them. Which would leave her with 8 left.

I haven’t counted the New Year’s Day one as it’ll depend how her holiday year runs - but you / her can work that out.

If she doesn’t work on bank holidays - then yes.

Bank holiday are often misunderstood. They’re perceived as being a fixed day off over and above holiday allowances, but in reality theyre just a common way of standardising how time off is spread out in a lot of office based jobs.

It’s sometimes easier to think of how it works for people who work in hospitality. They still get the 28 days statutory entitlement if they work 5 days a week. Their work is open as usual on bank holidays, so they are expected to work it or book a day off. Office roles are similar, except rather than have that choice a lot of employers just define that everyone will take those days off and deduct it from the statutory minimum entitlement.

If it’s a big issue for her, she should ask her employer about the potential for swapping some days around to claw back the additional
holidays, or see if she can shift her pattern by a week this year.

She's now cross that she didn't find this out before she wasted a day holiday when her son had his tonsils out 😬

She has nowhere to manoeuvre - she can't get a decent length break to take the children on holiday. This also means that we can't get away on holiday because that would mean that she would have to use her holidays to cover the time that we're away when we'd usually have her children whilst she works.

Just doesn't seem to stack up this year.

She may want to look into parental leave. It unpaid, but she’s entitled to take an average of a week a year per child while they’re under 18. I think it’s up to a maximum of 4 weeks in a year. Yes, it’s a financial impact but it’s a pre tax and NI deduction so it’s not quite as bad.

It’s also worth asking about the potential for swapping some days / doing some extra to make up the bank holidays so can keep some
of the holiday allowance. (And while yes, it’s annoying to not have had it spelt out sooner it sounds like it’s always been in her contract, and it’s not like there we’re any other sensible options for the tonsil surgery).

Some other tactics that can be good for building up extra time off when you work part time:
become a first aider and do your training courses on convenient days when you’d usually be off, do holiday cover for a colleague, swap days with your job share to cover things that suit you both better, cover events / conferences / weekend issues occasionally so build some TOIL.

Yes, agree with the parental leave suggestion. https://www.gov.uk/parental-leave/entitlement

Yes.

Full time staff get 28 days, of which 8 are bank holidays. Every bank holiday comes out of their entitlement. The mistake people often make is to thing bank holidays are somehow special when calculating the holiday entitlement for part time staff. They aren't.

Your daughter is working 5 days out of every 2 weeks, so effectively 2.5 days per week. She should get 14 days. Any bank holidays that fall on one of her normal working days come out of that. So, if 7 of the bank holidays fall on her normal working days, she only has 7 days to take when she wants.

I think you and she need to be creative aniut the days she is not working.. find holiday clubs that allow her to book by the day rather than the week, take breaks away on the days she is off.. (presumably she is off for 7 days in a row.. just not Saturday to Saturday.. you could do the same.. have a Wednesday to Wednesday holiday..

But she should check the calculation..

14 days minus bank holidays that fall on her working days.

When you work part time, Mondays always skew the calculations as there are at least four BHs that are Mondays each year. I usually offer those who work a Monday pattern to work a different day that week if they chose, so their leave could remain for when they needed it.

@MyOtherCarIsAPorsche It is unfortunate that this is how it works out this year.

Two suggestions - on weeks with a BH falling on her working day ask if she can swap and work one of her normal NWDs so she doesn’t use leave. I know this can be difficult with child care.

Parental Leave - I know it is unpaid and has to be requested in a block. If she asked to have the week where she works Thursday Friday she should only lose 2 days pay rather than 3.

Yes - it's really complicated this year.

Her opposite shift aren't very accommodating. When someone is off for any reason, they operate as one man down system and they have to cover the extra work which always results in them finishing later than usual.

I do childcare for both my daughters around the split shift rota - I get one day off a fortnight. So I'm not available when she's not working.

She's a single mother to three ND children and it's a nightmare trying to arrange/rearrange all the appointments her children need. The youngest has epilepsy which is not controlled by his medication and can be in hospital overnight/several nights due to longer seizures. They don't pay her for this time off - she can't book further time off in case there are further medical emergencies along the way (which there will be). When I take her children to school I have to be on stand by because the school ring every time he has a seizure and he has to be picked up. When he falls asleep I have to pick him up immediately - he doesn't sleep well at night because the majority of his seizure activity is at night.

I've offered to pay the difference in earnings for her to have extra days off unpaid but she daren't take up this offer because she knows that she'll need time off with her son at some point.

It is really unfortunate - I feel really sorry for her.

And I'm very tempted to say that men never seem to be affected by these issues. I didn't actually type that did I?

I work 18.5 hours per week - 2 days one week and 3 the other. I get half of the PH ie 4. This year 5 PH days fall on my working days so I have to use an annual leave day to cover PH. It’s just how they fall this year. Some years I only need 1 PH so I get to use the other 3 when I want to. I just need to take the hit this year.

I don't think it's fair. All holiday, initial holiday, but also the bank holidays aswell, should be pro-rata'd for part timers, so it's fair.

How is it fair is someone working a Monday gets less overall entitlement that someone working a Tuesday, or off on a Wednesday. It should all be calculated that whatever your days, whatever your hours, you get a proportioned allowance, the same as / equivalent to a full timer. All should get similar proportions.

I also hate how most online calculators assume you only get the minimum whereas many other companies don't just offer statutory minimum. Eg if 20 days + 8 bank holidays is what your company offers, statutory minimum. But calculations on 25 days + 8 bank holidays = 33 is more complicated.

No, someone working on a Monday does not get less overall entitlement. They get the same overall entitlement, but more of it is taken up by bank holidays so there are fewer days available for them to take when they want.

The calculation for 25 days + 8 bank holidays is not in any way more complicated. If you are working, say, 2.5 days per week, you would get half the entitlement of full-time staff, so 16.5 days. Any bank holidays that fall on your normal working days would come out of that.

If she works every other Thurs-Weds then surely she has off every other Thurs-Weds. So she has 7 consecutive days off every fortnight, plus another 2 (weekend). By taking off a Thursday and Friday (2 days) she could take 11 days in a row to go on a longer holiday.

She has the same number of days leave as someone who worked the "opposite" split week as her - but they will get more choice over when to take their holidays as more bank holidays fell on her working days.

It is fair, but it feels fairer if you’re working in the kind of place where you can choose whether or not to take the bank holiday off. Doesn’t help much if you have kids who are also off on the same day though. At my work if I don’t want to use my bank holiday allowance to take of bank holiday Monday, I can use it to take another day some time.