Employers with Holiday Year Starting April 1st
As you may be aware, if your holiday year starts on 1st April, there have only been 7 bank holidays between 1st April 2024 and 31st March 2025, as Good Friday fell on 29th March 2024, and Easter Monday fell on 1 April.
This reduction in bank holidays could affect your employees’ holiday entitlements, particularly where workers are entitled to the statutory minimum under the Working Time Regulations which is 28 days per annum including bank holidays.
Before the end of this month, please ensure that your employees receive at least the statutory requirement of 28 days of holiday (if they work 5 days a week) or the pro-rata entitlement for those who work fewer than 5 days a week.
To ensure that your employees receive their full statutory entitlement, we advise you to review their holiday entitlement if you haven’t already done so.
Key Points to Review:
If the contract states 28 days, including bank holidays: There is no issue. Employees will be receiving the correct holiday entitlement (7 bank holidays off, and the remaining 21 days can be taken as leave at another time).
If the contract states 20 days plus bank holidays: this falls short of the statutory minimum for a full-time employee (working 5 days a week), as they would only receive 27 days of leave instead of the statutory 28.
If you fall into the latter category, we strongly recommend reviewing the holiday entitlement for all staff to ensure that employees are provided with their full statutory holiday entitlement.
Also a quick reminder to those that use our absence management tool to ensure you add the new holiday entitlement for holiday year commencing 1 April using the ‘FUTURE HOLIDAY’ button on the Holiday and Sick pay tab (on the eConnect portal).
If you have any questions or need assistance in adjusting your holiday policy, please do not hesitate to contact us.
