The state funeral of HM the Queen on Monday 19th September will be marked with an additional bank holiday. Below is a repeat of guidance about entitlement to bank holidays published by the PDA earlier this year.
In the circumstances of this bank holiday, the PDA hope that regardless of any contractual position, all employers will give all their employees an additional paid day off of work, either on the bank holiday itself or at a later date for those who are unable to take an extra day off from work on that particular day.
Bank Holiday Guidance from April 2022:
The term “bank” holiday is used interchangeably with “public” holiday in the UK, and for all practical purposes, there is no difference. These bank/public holidays differ across the UK nations and each year there are usually 8 permanent bank holidays in England and Wales, 9 in Scotland, and 10 in Northern Ireland. These are:
- New Year’s Day
- 2 January (Scotland only)
- St Patrick’s Day (Northern Ireland only)
- Good Friday
- Easter Monday (not in Scotland)
- May Day (the first Monday in May)
- Spring bank holiday (the last Monday in May)
- The Battle of the Boyne (Northern Ireland only)
- Summer bank holiday (the first Monday in August for Scotland in line with the earlier School holiday period, last Monday in August elsewhere in the UK)
- St Andrew’s Day (Scotland only)
- Christmas Day
- Boxing Day
In the UK, if a bank holiday is on a weekend, a ‘substitute’ weekday becomes a bank holiday, normally the following Monday.
Arrangements for 2022
An additional bank holiday will take place in June 2022 to mark Her Majesty the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. The Spring bank holiday (normally falling on the last Monday in May) will be moved to Thursday 2 June. The additional bank holiday will then take place on Friday 3 June.
This applies in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Members may recall that the UK has enjoyed additional bank holidays before, in both 2011 and 2012. In regard to whether employees can get an additional paid day off work in 2022, employers may decide to follow the same approach that they used on those occasions.
Employee rights
In the UK, workers are legally entitled to a minimum of 5.6 weeks’ paid holiday a year as their statutory entitlement (meaning 28 days for full-time employees working five days per week), and some employers offer additional annual leave as a contractual benefit. However, bank and public holidays may be included within the minimum entitlement. There is no statutory right to be paid bank and public holidays on top of the entitlement of 5.6 weeks.
Part-time workers have the same rights as full-time employees to bank holiday entitlements but on a pro-rata basis. This is in line with the Part-time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2000.
Whether or not you are able to take time off for bank holidays will depend on your terms of employment. An employee’s contract should set out:
- any right to time off on bank and public holidays
- whether or not that time off is paid
- any appropriate rate of pay if they work one of these days, i.e., the normal rate of pay or an enhanced rate, e.g., ‘time-and-a-half’ or ‘double time’.
Many pharmacists provide critical healthcare services. Therefore, pharmacies may need to be open for patients and 24 hour a day on-call arrangements in some settings, such as hospitals that need to stay open on bank holidays. Where such professional/contractual responsibilities to patients mean pharmacists must work on a bank holiday, this may mean those pharmacists will not benefit from a bank holiday period break on the actual day, even if they may have an entitlement to that number of days off from work at some point during the working year.
Are employees automatically entitled to the additional bank holiday in 2022?
In 2022, with an additional bank holiday in June, some employees will be asking if they are entitled to an additional paid day off work. The answer will depend on the wording of your employment contract. For example, if the contract states:
“20 days holiday per annum plus bank holidays” – This should be an entitlement to all bank holidays, and in 2022 there will be 9 instead of the usual 8 (or 10 in Scotland and 11 in Northern Ireland). The employee should be entitled to paid time off on the additional Bank Holiday in June 2022.
“20 days holiday per annum plus New Year’s Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Early May bank holiday, Spring bank holiday, Summer bank holiday, Christmas Day and Boxing Day” – Where there is a list of the actual bank holidays set out within the contract like this, the employee will only be entitled to receive paid time off on those specific bank holidays listed. There will be no automatic entitlement to paid time off on 3 June.
“20 days holiday per annum plus 8 bank/public holidays” – If the actual names of the bank holidays are not expressly stated, then this means there may need to be a discussion as to which 8 of the 9 bank holidays in 2022 the employee can utilise as bank holidays in 2022. There would be no entitlement to the extra day.
“28 days holiday per annum” – In this example the contract is silent on bank holidays and the employee has the ability to book 28 days holiday per year, and those days can include any of the bank holidays if the employee wants to take paid leave on those days. In 2022, the employee might wish to use one of their allowed 28 days for the 3 June for example. However, there is no increase in holiday entitlement as a result of the additional bank holiday, as the contractual entitlement remains at 28 days per year in total.
If there is no contractual right to the extra bank holiday, an employer could decide to close on Friday 3 June 2022, without giving an extra day’s holiday. In this case, the employee would not be paid for that day either unless they used one of their annual leave days to cover it.
Even if there is no contractual right to the extra bank holiday, an employer could decide to give the extra day’s entitlement as a gesture of goodwill. The PDA believes this is in the spirit of the government’s decision to have the extra bank holiday this year, to enable and encourage all citizens to have a day off of work on which they might celebrate the monarch’s jubilee.
Employees are advised to check the arrangements for 2022 with their employer now, rather than assume that they will be entitled to the additional bank holiday. Members are encouraged to contact the PDA for advice if necessary.
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